


Abram Isn't Dead

by fairietailed



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alice Isn't Dead AU, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, conspiracy nonsense, shuffles between first person and third person narrative, supernatural horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2020-07-29 19:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 86,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20087764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairietailed/pseuds/fairietailed
Summary: [static][radio clicks on]You always told me that you wouldn't run. You promised, you know; told me that you were done running, that you were going to stay.But one day I came home, and you were gone.Most of your drawers were empty. Your favorite Knights sweater was gone. Your barely-held-together running shoes and your Docs, the ones I got you for Christmas two years ago. You left a note on the kitchen counter."Don't come looking," you said.Well, fuck that. You don't get that choice.I'm looking, Abram. And I won't stop until I find you.[radio clicks off]--An Alice Isn't Dead AU in which Abram is running and Andrew refuses to let him go.





	1. Rest Stop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [godotco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/godotco/gifts).

> I am. So very excited for this.
> 
> Happy birthday Jen :3
> 
> (Please note that there are graphic depictions of violence in this story. Especially in this chapter.)

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ You always told me that you wouldn't run. You promised, you know; told me that you were done running, that you were going to stay. _

_ But one day I came home, and you were gone. _

_ Your things had been packed. Your stupid duffle bag that I let you keep for some reason was gone -- I knew I should have burned it. Instead it had been stuffed at the bottom of our closet, and apparently, you'd used it to pack your things before you left. _

_ Most of your drawers were empty. Your favorite Knights sweater was gone. Your barely-held-together running shoes and your Docs, the ones I got you for Christmas two years ago. You left a note on the kitchen counter. _

_ "Don't come looking," you said. _

_ Well, fuck that. You don't get that choice. _

_ I'm looking, Abram. And I won't stop until I find you. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn't Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter I: Rest Stop.**

* * *

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [a long pause, silent save for the radio static and the sound of traffic] _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Do you remember that time we drove through Virginia and stopped at that Waffle House? We sat in the back corner booth. It was nearly midnight. We had been driving for almost the entire day. We were going to New York to visit Boyd and Wilds. You were excited and wouldn't shut up about it, about the fact that they had a kid now, and you were a little freaked out at the idea of something so small and fragile. That you were worried that you'd break it just by being in its general vicinity. _

_ The booth was an ugly red, and it had holes carved into the cushions until the stuffing was nearly falling out. Like an evisceration to a stomach. It was most likely done by teenagers looking for the thrill of vandalizing something that wasn't their own, and then was made worse by people who couldn't stop their own hands from pulling at the open wound, tugging and tugging until the inner organs of the booth came tumbling out. _

_ You were one of those people, worrying your lip between your teeth as you plucked at the stuffing of the stupid red booth. I told you to stop. You put your hands on top of the table. Three minutes and 21 seconds later, you were pulling at the stuffing again. _

_ You never knew when to stop. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The lights off the highway cast the road in a faded yellow glow that Andrew found atrocious. It was always harder to see at night, with the highway dark and the oncoming headlights brighter than the fucking sun. The glare from his glasses didn't help anything, either.

He knew he should pull over. It would make the most sense. He would pull over, sleep for a few hours, and then he would leave again, back onto the road and on to his next shipment.

There was always another shipment.

He was on his way to Arizona, now. He’d been driving from Washington for the past day and a half, a 24-hour drive that he’d extended to almost 72. He had places to look, after all. He had rocks to turn over and corners to check. He had something more important than delivering -- what was he delivering, again?

Tiny hotel soaps, maybe?

The radio rattled on, playing some 80's ballad that he hadn't heard in months. It was a song Neil liked. One of the only songs he really knew the words to, actually. Andrew had caught him singing it in the shower on more than one occasion. He sang it in the kitchen, too, as he made Andrew pancakes in the morning. He would sway back and forth while he sang, some small attempt at dancing, and when he realized Andrew was in the kitchen watching he would turn around, smiling, and use his spatula as a microphone as he serenaded him. It was the same, almost every morning. Andrew hated it.

He hated it, the way Neil's crooked smile would tilt up on one side of his mouth while the other stayed low, but both eyes would crinkle at the corners in genuine affection. He hated the way Neil would lean across the counter to kiss him good morning, hated the way he would sing "two more minutes" as he turned back to the stove. Hated the way that it was the same routine every fucking morning, never changing, never different, never unfamiliar. He hated the way Neil's body moved at he swayed, the way his sweats hung low on his hip bones, the collar of his sleep shirt so worn and stretched that it hung off one shoulder, exposing his scars for Andrew to see. He never tried to hide them, though. Never with Andrew. He was happy. He was comfortable. He was safe.

He missed it so much that his heart hurt.

It had been one year, three months, and forty-seven days since Neil Josten-Minyard disappeared.

Since he left.

And Andrew would travel to the ends of the Earth to find him again.

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

[ _ Love is all around you, yeah. _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2q_-xN2N54)

[ _ Love is knockin', outside your door. _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2q_-xN2N54)

[ _ Waitin' for you is this love made just for two. _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2q_-xN2N54)

[ _ Keep an open heart and you'll find love again, I know. _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2q_-xN2N54)

[ _ Love will find a way. _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2q_-xN2N54)

[ _ Darlin', love is gonna find a way, find its way back to you. _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2q_-xN2N54)

[ _ Love will find a way. _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2q_-xN2N54)

_ [radio clicks off] _

_ [static] _

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ So we were at the Waffle House. I'd just ordered my waffles, because that's what you do at a Waffle House. You order waffles. _

_ I mean, do you have a choice? What else would you even get? The soup? _

_ Well, I guess you can get other things. Exhibit A would be you, actually. The fucking idiot that orders a fruit bowl at a Waffle House. I didn't even see that listed on the menu. _

_ You rolled your eyes at me when I said that to you, though. "They sell fruit here," you said. "So all I had to do was ask them to throw some in a bowl." _

_ "You sound like Kevin," I said. _

_ "Oh God, don't say that," you said. _

_ You laughed. It was one of those short, breathy laughs that you do. When you're content and happy but you're trying not to show it. Like showing it would lead to something bad. Like accepting that you're happy would lead to something painful immediately after. _

_ So you huffed out your laugh, and went back to picking at the booth. I asked you what was wrong. You said, "nothing". I said, "yeah right". You said, "do you ever wonder if-". _

_ You cut yourself off. Shook your head. Went back to pulling out stuffing. _

_ You kept your eyes trained across the Waffle House. At some man sitting on the opposite side of the room. He was in his own ugly red booth, all by himself. He had a hat on. It said BUTCHER in big, block letters. They were red. Not the red of the ugly Waffle House booths. _

_ The letters were dark red. _

_ Blood red. _

_ The hat was black. The letters looked like they were bleeding off of the material. _

_ You couldn’t look away. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew turned into the rest stop, parking the 18-wheeler in the spot furthest away from anyone else. That was the thing he liked best about being a trucker; everyone kept to themselves. There was no need for conversation, really. Not when you’re constantly moving.

He locked the cab as he hopped out. This, he thought, was the _ worst _ part of being a trucker. The fact that he was so short, and the cab of his truck was so high.

No way he would ever say that out loud, though.

He made his way across the dark parking lot to the restrooms. Once finished, he ducked over to one of the vending machines on the other side of the building. They had Chips Ahoy in this one. Thank God.

He got two packets of mini Chips Ahoy and a bag of Doritos, and a water and a Red Bull from the one that was dispensing drinks. He turned on his heel and began walking back across the parking lot to his truck.

“Hey.”

The voice took him off guard. He hadn’t seen anyone when he’d left the restroom or bought his things from the vending machine. He hadn’t seen anyone in the parking lot as he had made his way through it.

And yet, here was a man in front of him, calling him over.

He was a tall man. He towered over Andrew, really, though that wasn’t saying much. Most people did.

But the way the man was hunched, as if his back had been broken and realigned wrong, his arms dangling low at his sides, told Andrew that if the man stood straight, he would be much taller than an average man.

He stood directly under the streetlamp that lit the large parking lot. His nails were long and dirty and nearly yellow, and his hair was matted and dirty and hung in clumps around his shoulders. He wore a hat. He was sweaty. He was dirty. He was grinning.

“What do you want?”

Andrew kept out of arm’s reach. Always out of arm’s reach. Always ready to run, ready to fight, ready to defend.

The man took a step forward.

Andrew held his ground.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Maybe it’s the sound of the engine. Maybe it’s the feel of the truck on the road, the fact that it towers over everyone else entirely. Maybe it’s the fact that no one bothers to talk to you when you’re a truck driver. At least not longer than they have to. _

_ Maybe it’s the freedom that comes with it. _

_ Whatever it is, Abram, I kind of like it. As much as I can enjoy something, at least. _

_ [silence] _

_ [a sigh] _

_ Bee would tell me that I’m being dramatic. _

_ “You can enjoy things,” she’d say. “You don’t have to be afraid of feeling things.” _

_ But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The last time I felt anything - the last time I let something in - it ran away. Away, away, little rabbit on the run, falling back into old habits and leaving his life behind. _

_ Leaving _ me _ behind. _

_ I shouldn’t be angry with you. Not really. Not when it’s been staring me in the face from the moment we met. From the moment we first started this... Thing. This ‘not nothing’. Since I first acknowledged it _ as _ a ‘not nothing’. _

_ Six and a half years. _

_ Six and a half years to be lulled into a false sense of security. To be lead to believe that you had put it behind you. That you’d changed. That you refused to leave what we’d built together. That the long nights and the calm days and the putting each other back together meant something to you. That we had built something together, something good, and you were happy here. _

_ Happy with me. _

_ [a pause, heavy, punctuated by the sounds of cars passing on the highway] _

_ [a sigh] _

_ Anyway, truck driving makes me not-miserable. It doesn’t make me happy. I mean, nothing really does, and you know that. The one thing that did isn’t in the picture anymore, apparently. But this? _

_ This makes me not-miserable. _

_ I like watching the scenery. Whenever there is scenery, at least. Places like here, like Arizona, where it’s nothing but desert and sand and nothing-ness for as far as the eye can see, that’s when it gets a bit boring. But the cities with forests are nice. Or places with mountains. _

_ Driving the mountains sucks, of course. But looking at them is nice. _

_ There’s a factory here. It sits on the horizon like a mountain, smokestacks raised high toward the sky. But mountains don’t look the way this factory does: like a Tetris board put together wrong. Like someone had too many long pieces and not enough Ls. It swallows the horizon, black smoke overtaking the sky, eating the blue and turning it an ugly grey. _

_ I hate Arizona. I’m getting out of here as soon as I drop off these stupid mini-soaps. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The man took another step forward. This time, Andrew took half a step back.

“What do you want,” he repeated, and the man shrugged.

“Wanted to ask you a question.”

The way he moved made him look like he had no bones. Like he was just stacks of meat and sweat all sewn together. His smile was wide, and sharp, and much too big for his face. He was filthy. He was _ so _ filthy.

He took another step forward, and Andrew could read the words on his hat.

BUTCHER.

Blood red on black background.

“I don’t want your question,” Andrew said, and the man shrugged again. It looked like his shoulder would slide off of his body if his shirt wasn’t holding him together.

“People get what they deserve,” he said, “whether or not they want it.”

His voice sounded like an echo in a cavern. Like the hollow whistle of a wooden flute. Nothing in the tone of his voice matched who he was.

“What do I deserve?” Andrew asked, taking a hesitant step to the left in order to circle around the man. If he could just make it back to his cab-

“It’s dangerous out here,” the man said, and somehow, his grin stretched wider. His teeth were so straight, and so clean, and his face was so dirty, his shirt covered in mud, or blood, or rot, or-

“Out where,” Andrew asked. “Here? In this rest stop? On the road? In the next town over? In the world? Life?” He paused, taking another step. “Did you come out here to explain life to me? Or death?”

The man laughed. It was something that clawed its way up his throat, scratched its way out from between his teeth. It sounded like blood should follow.

“Yes,” he said, slowly “I’ve come to explain death to you.”

Andrew took another step. If the man came any closer, he thought, he would run.

“My question,” the man said, “is if you wanna see somethin’ funny.”

The last half of his sentence came with a hard southern drawl, and Andrew frowned.

“And if I say no?”

The man shrugged. Another shift of his unhooked shoulder.

“Not much of a choice,” he said, and moved across the parking lot.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [silence] _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Abram, I- _

_ [silence] _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ You wouldn’t stop staring at that man in the Waffle House. _

_ Every time it looked like you were finished, your eyes would trail back to him. You looked unsettled. Like you’d seen some kind of ghost. _

_ “Seriously,” I said. “What’s wrong with you.” _

_ “Nothing,” you said. But it came out like a whisper. Hollow. Like you couldn’t even convince yourself of your train of thought. “Nothing.” _

_ “I’m not stupid,” I said. “I know when something is bothering you.” _

_ “It’s just-” _

_ You do that a lot, you know. Cut yourself off. End your sentences half-formed, as if I’m not interested in hearing the rest of your statement. It is infuriating, Abram, and I hate you for it. _

_ “Just what,” I said. _

_ “That man,” you said. “He looks like my father.” _

_ I looked up at the man. Looked back at you. Looked at the man again. _

_ Abram, I know what your father looks like. I know the monster that haunts your dreams almost as well as you do. I know the curve of his jaw, the color of his hair, the blue of his eyes. They are similar to your own, though you wear them with an ease that he never had. You wear them, and they are yours. _

_ I know what your father looks like. _

_ This man looked nothing like him. _

_ The man was short. He was fat. He had brown hair and green eyes. He had an uneven mustache, and his body looked like it was suctioned into the clothes that he wore. He was filthy. He was ugly. He had on a stupid hat that your father would never wear. _

_ He looked nothing like your father, Abram, and I told you just as much. _

_ “I know,” you said. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything. It doesn’t make sense.” _

_ I looked at the man again. The man looked back. _

_ And then he smiled. _

_ There was a long silence then. It stretched between us like a rubber band, each of us holding an end and leaning back until we were sure it would break. _

_ I was the first to let go. _

_ “I see it now,” I said. _

_ And I did. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew wasn’t sure why he didn’t turn and walk away.

Maybe it was because the man was not heading toward him, but was heading _ away _ from him. Maybe because, no matter how much he didn’t want to admit it, the man scared him.

The man that was not a man. The man that was a monster.

The Butcher.

He watched as the Butcher made his way across the parking lot. Watched as he strolled right up to a group of men standing by the restrooms talking. Watched as the Butcher said “Hey Earl,” like he had known the man for years. Watched as he grabbed Earl by the scruff of his neck, steering him away from the group. Watched the vacant look in Earl’s eyes, like he was sleeping, like he was drugged, like he had no idea what was going on.

He watched as the Butcher walked Earl to his spot beneath the street lamp. Watched as he-

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [silence] _

_ Sometimes I hate you more than any of them, Abram. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

-pulled Earl close to him, grinning. Earl looked awake now, though he was still unmoving, the Butcher’s grip on him too tight. The smile the Butcher gave him was wide, impossibly wide, seam-splittingly wide, as if his grin was about to pull directly off of his face.

The streetlamp flickered. Both of the men - one a man, and one a not-man - looked at Andrew.

Earl’s eyes were wide. The Butcher’s were bright. The men by the restroom continued to talk, as if nothing was happening on the other side of the parking lot.

They stared at Andrew for a long moment.

And then the Butcher took a bite out of Earl.

It was not something done out of hunger. It was slow, almost sensual, like a tender caress for a lover that has been gone for too long. It was a demonstration.

He tore a chunk out of his jugular. Earl didn’t make a sound. He was silent, a single tear tracking down his face, and then his eyes were blank. His eyes were as dead as he was.

The Butcher finished swallowing his bite, and proceeded to dip his fingers into the wound, picking out pieces of Earl as if pulling jelly beans from a bag. _ Not this flavor. Not this flavor. I would like a red one, not a blue. _

The Butcher looked up at Andrew again, and smiled.

He let out another clawed-up laugh.

This time, blood followed.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The night sky in Arizona is the same as anywhere else. _

_ The sky is the sky is the sky. The clock reads the same time as I started this morning, but it’s the other hemisphere of the day. _

_ We talk a lot about the sky, don’t we? We make so many comparisons. Something is as dark as the night sky. Something is sprinkled with whatever that looks like the stars above us. The sunset turned from red to purple to black and it was simply breathtaking, like that person’s smile. _

_ So much of the night sky, though, is nothing. Just endless black, an abyss that we will never fully know, an untouchable thing that is more idea than reality. _

_ Whatever. Ignore me, because what do I know? I’m just a guy driving mini-soaps from one place that doesn’t need it to another. _

_ [silence] _

_ [a breath] _

_ The darkness here has a depth to it, though. It just keeps going, on and on into nothingness. _

_ I didn’t know that dark could have a bottom until I saw a dark that didn’t. _

_ Honestly, the sky here is the same as everywhere else. But somehow, it’s beautiful. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s been hours since I’ve seen a house. The light doesn’t reach this corner of the desert, and so the stars stretch out for miles, so far that it almost touches the horizon in front of me. It’s beautiful. _

_ So much I’ve seen on this trip is beautiful. More than you would think. Even the bad things. _

_ It makes you think, though, about our place here. About how insignificant it all is. About how none of this matters, in the end. _

_ We are nothing if not absurd. _

_ We are nothing. _

* * *

Andrew ran.

He was not ashamed to admit it. 

He ran.

He ran to his cab. He locked the doors. He started the engine.

He ran.

Behind him in the mirror, he could still see the two figures. Could see the silhouette of Earl dying at the Butcher’s hands, a group of men still talking happily by a rest stop bathroom, the only person able to help driving in the opposite direction, only the company of a monster as he choked on his own blood.

He could still see the details. The memory was crystal clear.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Was it me? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew saw the Butcher again.

And again, and again, and again.

He never said anything, and Andrew never said anything back.

But he knew that he was being followed, and the Butcher knew that he knew.

He kept going.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ You know, Abram, sometimes I think about the places we've traveled. Of the places we've been together, of the places you've taken me. And then I think of the places you haven't; of the places you visited with your mother first, and refused to go to again. _

_ I wonder if you've gone back, now. _

_ I'm sure you're running out of places to hide. A man can only have to many issues, Abram. A man can only avoid so many ghosts. And you, my dear, have enough to fill a graveyard. _

_ So it makes me wonder: _

_ Where are you hiding? _

_ [radio clicks off] _


	2. Abram

_ [static]  _

_ [radio clicks on]  _

_ I thought you were dead, you know. _

_ I really did, Abram. _

_ There was no other explanation. No other reason you would just disappear. I mean, there was no evidence for it. Especially with your note sitting on the counter, written in your own handwriting.  _

_ But then again, wasn't  _ that  _ evidence enough? _

_ With a father like yours, who knows what enemies were left. _

_ But no, I couldn't accept it. I couldn't accept the idea of you just... Leaving. Of you running. _

_ I think I would rather you be dead. _

_ And so I mourned you. _

_ I mourned you, Abram. From my goddamn gut, I really did. _

_ I mourned the loss of the halo of warmth that you left behind on your pillow. I mourned the loss of your stupid smile, your laugh, your hauntingly blue eyes and the soft feel of your hair between my fingers. I mourned the loss of your voice, the way your mouth formed my name, the way you looked when you woke up in the mornings, stretched out beside me, happy and safe. _

_ I mourned you. _

_ I've never loved anyone so hard. _

_ I don't think I've honestly ever loved anyone at all. _

_ So, fuck you for that. _

_ I mean, really. _

_ [radio clicks off]  _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn't Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter II: Abram.**

* * *

* * *

Millport, Arizona was a town that was unremarkable in almost every way.

It was small, a nearly nonexistent point on Andrew's GPS. He could see almost the entire town from his place at the stoplight; there was a teenage girl pumping gas at a station across the street, a mother and son leaving the Millport Inn, room 310, an old man crossing the road in front of his truck.

The streets were nearly empty. It was 110 degrees. The sky was a rusted shade of blue.

He had finished his delivery, and once that was finished, he was given another. From Arizona to Utah, this time. Hairdryers.

Millport was dusty, and barren, and practically deserted. It looked as though the world had not passed through in quite some time.

The stoplight turned green.

Andrew kept driving.

* * *

_ [static]  _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I did what you're supposed to do when someone dies.  _

_ I talked. _

_ I talked to Bee. Because it's what's healthy, right? That's what you're supposed to do.  _

_ "If you keep it bottled up, it only hurts yourself." That's what Renee said. It's what Bee said. It's what the movies said. So I talked. _

_ Sat down in a room with a woman that I trusted and attempted to describe the shape of the monster devouring me. Because you hope that, by describing the monster, it makes it more human. It makes it something that can be recognized, something that can be conquered. Something that you can move on from. _

_ No one ever tells you that none of that is true. _

_ But I went to Bee anyway. Talked anyway. Described the monster anyway; explained the way it was ripping at my chest the same way you ripped at the cushions at the Waffle House. Told her about the way it felt to wake up alone, in a bed far too big for just myself, without your body curled up beside me. The way it felt to reach out for you, and have you not be there. The way it felt to look for you, to make as if to talk to you, and have you simply be gone. _

_ Because you were.  _

_ You were gone. _

_ The monster was swallowing me whole, and there was no amount of talking that could convince it to stop. _

_ [radio clicks off]  _

* * *

Something was wrong.

Andrew sat at the stoplight, his fingers drumming the steering wheel. He chewed at the nail on his left thumb, his elbow tucked against the glass of the driver's side window. He frowned. He watched the light.

Something was not right.

The sign to his left read Millport Inn. He watched the woman and her son carefully, though they weren't exiting the motel the way they had before. Instead they stood stock still, their faces pressed against the wood of the door of room 310. They did not turn around.

He looked to his right.

The teenage girl was pumping gas. But instead of holding the nozzle she stood, as still as the mother and child, with her face pressed against the glass of her passenger side window. She did not move. He could not see her face.

The old man stood in front of the station, posed as if ready to cross the street. But instead of moving he was frozen, face pressed against the light pole, almost as if he could sink into it at any moment.

All around them, the town was rotting away.

It reminded Andrew of the Butcher. There was something Other about it; about the dirt and rot and sludge that filled the town, covered the roads and the cars and the buildings as if they had been decaying for years. They looked as though they were ready to crumble, as though they were made of nothing but wet sand.

The light turned green.

Andrew began to drive.

The mud beneath his tires caused them to shift, but the truck continued on.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I found out by watching the news.  _

_ I never watch the news. I never did. You know that. You know that I hate it. _

_ Maybe that's why you weren't careful enough to cover it up. _

_ But the news happened to be on in the waiting room of Bee's office one day. It was a report of a murder. Something brutal. Something awful, a couple torn apart or something by an animal that no one had ever seen before. Not that there were witnesses. Just that the body didn't look like the remains of a bear, or a wolf, or any other creature that has ever lived, really. _

_ There was a crowd at the scene. Dozens of people all crowded around yellow tape, craning their necks and covering their mouths. People spoke to the reporters, misty-eyed and disbelieving, each attempting to describe the monster that was devouring them. _

_ And then, there you were. _

_ You were standing in the crowd, at the bottom right corner of the screen, hands stuffed into the front of your favorite Knights hoodie. Your face was incredibly blank, like an artist rendition of you, one where they forgot that you were a real boy. _

_ Your expression was blank, but your eyes were on fire.  _

_ You looked like you knew exactly what had happened.  _

_ Did you know, Abram? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on]  _

_ [silence] _

_ Fuck. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I never watched the news. But after that, I couldn't go a day without it. _

_ I watched as much of it as possible. All outlets, on every channel available, and when those were exhausted, online too. _

_ And I began to see. _

_ A fire in Northern California. A building collapse in New York. A car crash in Louisiana. A murder in Colorado. _

_ And, somehow, you. _

_ Sometimes the glimpses were fleeting. Sometimes there-and-gone, a face disappeared into a crowd before a clear snapshot could be taken. But other times it was long, hard looks at your carefully blank mask. Always the same look, always in the same hoodie, and always, impossibly, there. _

_ You. Over and over and over you were there. No matter where it was, no matter how soon after the last incident, you were there. _

_ So, my husband wasn't dead.  _

_ That was good to know.  _

_ [radio clicks off]  _

* * *

Andrew was surrounded by trees.

Normally, he wouldn't mind this fact. Normally, he would feel more comfortable, more at ease, less exposed than he would in a desert town like Millport. 

But that was the problem.

He was still, somehow, in Millport.

But this Millport was covered in trees.

The canopies were low, hanging down over the streets so they nearly brushed against the top of his cab. Hardly any sunlight was let in, with only patches of oranges and yellows sprinkled down the street.

The inn was covered in moss and vines, the roots of trees tangled in the legs of the mother and child as they attempted to make their way from room 310.

The girl pumping gas leaned against the trunk of an oak tree, watching the meter of the gas pump rise slowly, the top of the station covered in leaves and ivy.

The old man had branches wrapped around his legs, winding up to his chest, unmoving on the sidewalk. He stared at Andrew. Andrew stared back.

The light, covered in flowers that made it nearly impossible to see through, turned green.

Andrew nearly slammed on the gas pedal.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I stopped seeing Bee. _

_ I stopped wallowing. I stopped mourning. I stopped sitting still entirely.  _

_ I started doing instead. Doing.... Something. I don't know. Anything. Started doing anything. _

_ I guess I'm still talking, though. It's just into this stupid radio, instead of to a trained professional. Hoping that you hear me, that you hear the name that you told me in a place we called home, and that maybe you’ll come back. _

_ It's a stupid thing, hope.  _

_ But I am doing it anyway.  _

_ [radio clicks off]  _

* * *

Millport was on fire.

Andrew sat at the stoplight, his gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white.

The city was burning. Every inch, every building, the entire town lit up in an inferno with no heat attached, a fire that danced around unaffected people.

None of the flames reached Andrew.

None of the flames reached-

* * *

_ [radio clicks on]  _

_ Are you doing this?  _

_ Are you doing this to me? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The motel was completely engulfed, the mother and son nowhere to be found.

The gas station was alight, the teenager absent as well.

The old man was crossing the road. His entire body was lit up in flames. He was not screaming. He was not crying. He was simply walking, cane held out in front of him, unaffected by the hellscape that surrounded him.

Andrew couldn't look away.

The light turned green. It looked yellow, though, when surrounded by fire.

Andrew continued to drive.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on]  _

_ I started to look through your things. I had left them alone until then, the memories of them too heavy, the thought of touching these pieces of you almost too much to bear. _

_ But now they weren't memories.  _

_ They were evidence. _

_ And Abram, I found so much. _

_ On your laptop, scattered through emails; on scraps of paper hidden throughout your desk; on bookmarks strategically placed throughout your books on our living room shelves. _

_ They were full of phrases I didn't understand. _

_ "The Baltimore Project." _

_ "Sector 10." _

_ And more than any other: Fox Shipping Company. _

_ Why? _

_ What did these things mean? _

_ What was significant about them? _

_ I wanted to know. _

_ So... I got a job.  _

_ Fox Shipping Company. "We go where we're needed". _

_ It's got an interesting ring to it, but if it will give me answers, I really couldn't care less. _

_ And Abram?  _

_ I will get answers. _

_ [radio clicks off]  _

* * *

Andrew wondered, briefly, if this was simply it, now.

If he was simply stuck in a never-ending loop of Millports, each only slightly different from the last. The sun was low on the horizon. He had spent an entire day driving through a town that was no more than three miles long.

Everything was back to normal, now. Nothing was on fire. The trees were gone. Everyone was moving. It was dusty. It was 110 degrees. The sky was a haunted shade of pink.

Everyone was crying.

The mother and son outside of the inn were simply sitting on the curb, clinging to one another, sobbing so hard it was a miracle they could breathe.

The teenager at the gas station wailed as she finished paying for her gas, closing her tank and moving around to her driver’s side door. She opened it, slid into the seat, and cried against the steering wheel.

The old man-

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The man is here, Abram. _

_ Somehow, he is in my truck. _

_ He is sitting beside me. _

_ He is staring at me. _

_ He is not moving. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“What do you want?”

It was the same question he had asked the Butcher. His body shook with the familiarity of the phrase; of all of the answers that he could get that could lead to something horribly, horribly wrong.

_ What do you want _ ?

The old man lifted a single, shaking arm.

He gestured to the road in front of them. The one that lead out of Millport.

The stoplight turned green.

Andrew left.

When he crossed the city lines, the man was gone.

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ We talk a lot, as a country, about freedom. _

_ It’s something that is ingrained in us since birth. It is something that we are taught from the moment we reach a teachable age; freedom is important. We get the right to choose. We are a free country, we are free people, we are free. _

_ But the term ‘freedom’ isn’t the only way to use the word ‘free’. _

_ ‘No longer confined or imprisoned’. That is ‘free’. _

_ Were you confined, Abram? With our life together? _

_ Or did you believe that I was? _

_ You freed me, when you left. I am free, now, to make choices that only affect myself. I was free to quit my stupid desk job and get a job for a shady shipping company that I only know about from your secret notes and files that you were free to keep to yourself. I am free to eat what I want, go where I want, do what I want. _

_ You freed me. But I didn't ask you to. I didn't want you to.  _

_ I am freer than I've ever been, Abram, and I am spiraling. I am spiraling across the entire goddamn country.  _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Utah. 

Trees.

No Millport in sight.

Andrew was almost five hours late on his delivery, but he couldn’t be bothered enough to care.

He would drop off this shipment, pick up another, and move on.

He would continue searching.

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [silence] _

_ I am going to find you, Abram. I am going to find you, and you are going to explain yourself.  _

_ You may think you are free, but you are not. You are not free of me. Not yet. _

_ [radio clicks off] _


	3. Warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes on this chapter:
> 
> 1) this chapter involves an attack. The attack itself is not graphic, but it is still there, along with threats of death.
> 
> 2) a majority of this chapter is written from Andrew's podcast-style POV. I felt the chapter just kind of flowed better if the events came from him directly, if that makes sense.
> 
> 3) I have never been to Nebraska, so sorry my dudes. (Though the town descriptors were straight from the Alice Isn't Dead podcast because. They cracked me up. But I can't remember if it was Nebraska she was describing so who knows.)

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Nebraska is a different kind of boring than Arizona was. _

_ Arizona had nothing; it was flat. Desert. Hot. Dirt. Just... nothing, as far as the eye could see for miles on end until you came across some town or some city or some... something. _

_ Nebraska is along the same lines, though instead of desert, it’s... corn. _

_ Corn, or wheat, or whatever. Just fields. Lots and lots of fields. _

_ Boring. _

_ [a pause] _

_ [thumping, distant, from the back of the truck] _

_ But it’s a different kind of boring. Much less dirt, much more... I dunno. Fields. _

_ It’s weird to think about, you know? The fact that someone lives here. The fact that someone’s life is waking up in the morning, getting ready, and then taking care of the fields. Growing crops.  _

_ Like, here I am, driving a truck from one end of the country to another, and meanwhile, there’s some guy just living his life growing corn. Imagine if that ended up being our life. Imagine if we ended up being corn farmers. How ridiculous- _

_ [a thump, even louder than the last] _

_ [muffled footsteps in the trailer] _

_ I- fuck. Something just shifted and moved in the trailer. Something has  _ been _ shifting and moving in the trailer. Something big.  _

_ What was that?  _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter III: Warning.**

* * *

* * *

Andrew pulled over.

It was against his better judgment, really, to pull over on the side of a nearly-empty road in bum-fuck Nebraska in the middle of the night. It was getting dark, and if there really was something in the back of the trailer, there would be no one around to help him.

But really, what could be back there?

He took his flashlight with him. It was one of those heavy, weighted ones. Industrial strength. He supposed that if it came down to it, he could use it as a weapon.

And if it  _ really _ came down to it, he still had his knives.

The gravel of the highway crunched beneath his boots as he made his way from the cab of his truck to the back of the trailer. He ran his hand along the metal, as if he could feel whatever might be in there. As if he could sense if it were real. His footsteps were unnaturally loud in the silence that surrounded him. There were no other cars on the road.

He made it to the back of the trailer, and pulled open the doors.

He clicked his flashlight on before he did anything else. Did a quick sweep of the trailer to see if anything threw itself out at him the first chance it got.

There was nothing.

He hauled himself up and went inside.

There was something anxious settling into his bones. A buzzing under his skin that he didn’t like. It made his hands itch, made the hair on his arms stand on end. The back of his head felt like it was spinning, like he couldn’t concentrate, like every inch of his body was telling him to run. Run.  _ Run _ .

There was nothing in the trailer.

Nothing but boxes of paper towels.

There was nothing.

He headed back to his cab.

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_ Do you remember what you told me, about the man in the diner? _

_ About how he looked like your father? _

_ I think I’ve figured out what you meant. _

_ See, it was in his smile. It was the curve of his mouth against too-straight teeth. The way that it sat, unnatural, tilted in a way that looked like it was trying to be casual and instead screamed threat. The man looked nothing like your father, Abram. Until he smiled. _

_ I remember, now, because the Butcher reminded me. _

_ The Butcher. With his hat with the blood red words on black background. _

_ The man in the diner had the same hat as him. _

_ Abram, do you think- _

_ [thump] _

_ [slow, heavy footsteps] _

_ Fuck. _

_ Abram, I swear I can hear something. I know there's someone back there.  _

_ They’re pacing.  _

_ I can hear it clearly, like the footsteps of an upstairs neighbor at three A.M., when it’s too quiet on your end and not quiet enough on theirs.  _

_ It’s like a neighbor, or a stranger, or someone in my house when they aren't welcome. It’s knowing that they’re there, pacing down the hall, and knowing they’re unwelcome. _

_ I know that they’re there. I know something is there. _

_ [a pause] _

_ [silence] _

_ [thump] _

_ Okay. _

_ I’m pulling over. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Nothing, again. Just empty boxes. Empty boxes and corners. _

_ But I'm not imagining things. I know I’m not. _

_ [pause] _

_ Honestly, though, I don’t know if I’d rather be right or wrong about this. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ -and then Nicky spent the next three days crying because he was too excited about my brother’s baby to properly think straight. He would start a conversation, think about the kid, and then lose it all over again. _

_ You thought it was hilarious, until Aaron stuck the kid in your arms. That shut you up immediately. You almost dropped it from the shock. I’m pretty sure Aaron would have killed you. _

_ You have this thing with kids, you know. Where you think that somehow you’ll be a terrible influence on them. Like you’ll corrupt them, somehow, just by looking at them. And normally I would agree, except you’re great with kids. They all love you, for some reason. _

_ I mean it doesn’t make any sense. Not really, since I thought they would be able to smell your fear from a mile away. But apparently, that just makes them more interested in you, or something.  _

_ Aaron’s kid is asking about you, you know. She can talk in full sentences now. She keeps asking when you’ll be coming home. _

_ When will that be, Abram? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Some of these towns are so small. Most of them only have four buildings all down their main road. And all of those buildings are the same. _

_ Motels. Sex shops. Churches. Everything you need; plus the bingo hall for entertainment. _

_ There’s probably a grocery store somewhere deeper in most of these towns. Maybe a gas station. Maybe a school. But these are the four buildings that show up in every town I drive through. These are the four recurring themes, and I’m not sure whether to be amused or worried on their behalf. I think it is interesting how- _

_ [thump] _

_ [heavy footsteps] _

_ [silence]  _

_ I swear.  _

_ Abram, I swear I'm not hearing things. Someone is back there.  _

_ But how did I not see them? Twice I’ve checked, and twice my trailer has been empty of everything except paper towels. _

_ So why do I  _ know _ something is back there? _

_ [pause] _

_ [thump] _

_ [footsteps] _

_ [a deep breath] _

_ Fuck it.  _

_ I'm going to keep driving. There's no way for them to get to me anyway, from there to here. _

_ So fuck it. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [thumping] _

_ [a pause] _

_ It’s late now. The clock says ten-oh-five P.M. _

_ The movement and footsteps have gotten more frequent. Whatever it is, it’s trying to provoke me. But I don’t care. I'll just keep driving until... I don't know when. I'll figure it out. _

_ [thump]  _

_ Heavy boots on the trailer floor. _

_ [thump] _

_ [a pause] _

_ I’m pulling over. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [shouts, thumping, scrambling in the trailer]  _

_ [sirens] _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [static]  _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [heavy breathing, panting]  _

_ Fuck.  _

_ Fuck.  _

_ I... Fuck, Abram. Jesus fucking Christ, I- _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [a pause] _

_ I pulled over in the parking lot of a WalMart. Thought that the crowds of people and the lights in the lot might provide me with some kind of... Protection, or something.  _

_ That was stupid of me. _

_ I got out of the truck. Grabbed my flashlight. Took a look around the parking lot. _

_ It was decently full, considering the time and the place. Not overly crowded, but not entirely empty, either. Maybe eighty cars, give-or-take. Enough to make me feel a bit more secure. _

_ Again. That was stupid of me. _

_ I walked down the length of the trailer. Touched the metal, let my fingers trail along the ridges, as if I could feel what was inside. _

_ I opened up the back, but I didn't need to search.  _

_ Because he was already there.  _

_ The Butcher. _

_ The Butcher, with his too-wide smile and his barely-there flesh. The Butcher, with his hair all clumped together and his shirt covered in dirt or blood or rot. The Butcher, with his broken back and his claw-like hands. _

_ He was there, at the edge of the trailer, and he was waiting. _

_ "Did you miss me?" he asked. _

_ Everything in the trailer was shredded.  _

_ He hopped out of the back, his legs collapsing beneath him and then somehow building themselves back up again, like jello dropping onto a counter and springing back into form. He took a step forward, and suddenly the crowds didn't feel like much protection at all. I remembered Earl from the rest stop, pulled away from a group of men as if they didn't even know he existed.  _

_ I wondered if that would be me. _

_ I took a step back.  _

_ "Where do you think you're going?" he asked. He motioned around him as if he were searching for something. _

_ "Where do you think you could you go that I couldn't follow? Don't you know who I work for?" _

_ He tapped the brim of his hat. The one that read BUTCHER in all caps.  _

_ Blood red on black background. _

_ "We're in a parking lot,” I said. “There are tons of people around." _

_ He laughed.  _

_ "People? People won't help you.” He took another step forward. I took another step back. He said, “There's not a person in this world that would help you."  _

_ Was he right Abram?  _

_ Is there no one who would?  _

_ He grabbed my arm, then.  _

_ It was not a question. It was a demand. It was a taking, as if my arm was a lifeline, and he was a drowning man at sea.  _

_ He took my arm, and he shoved me against the trailer. _

_ He was close, then. Too close. I could smell his breath as it fanned across my face, could smell the rot coming off of him in waves, sliding past his teeth and dripping onto me. I could see the whites of his eyes -- though they weren’t really white. They were yellow, almost. They were dead. His impossible smile grew impossibly wider. He looked like a wolf standing over his prey. _

_ And I was his prey.  _

_ He had me. That was all there was to it. His arm was against my throat, and he leaned into me just enough to let me know that he could end it if he wanted. With just enough pressure, he could end it, there, in the middle of a WalMart parking lot.  _

_ I fought, Abram. Of course, I fought. I swung my arms and kicked my legs, did what I could against someone almost three feet taller than I am and made of nothing but somehow-held-together meat. I even got a stab in with my switchblade. But it was as if he felt nothing. He didn't even flinch. _

_ His body dented with the blows but he didn't stop smiling. _

_ And now, I really couldn't breathe.  _

_ He leaned close, then. Impossibly closer with his impossible smile, and he said: "I could take a big bite out of you now, and it would be over. I could  _ devour  _ you.” _

_ His grin stretched so wide that it looked as though it was no longer a part of him.  _

_ “I could devour you,” he said. “And then what would become of your husband?"  _

_ The air was knocked from my lungs. I was already struggling, but that took the last of it away. _

_ He knew about you.  _

_ My body was growing weak. I could hardly breathe. I could hardly think. My mind was a haze and nothing was making sense. _

_ And then he mentioned you. _

_ I’ve been searching for so long, been through hell and back searching across bullshit states with bullshit scenery, with deserts and corn and hours and hours of driving, and this is how it ends? _

_ No. _

_ Fuck the Butcher. _

_ I fought. _

_ I fought, Abram. I kicked and I screamed and I threw punches like I was sparring with Renee. I called attention to us. The few people in the parking lot looked over, started pointing and calling out and making phone calls. I didn’t care. I fought. The Butcher’s face twisted into something ugly -- something uglier than it already was. Maybe from rage, or annoyance, or humor at the fact that none of this would make a difference. But I didn’t care. _

_ I fought. _

_ Right up until the sirens. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The police car pulled up shortly after. I’m assuming that it was thanks to one of the people that had been in the parking lot. I’m not sure, though it hardly mattered anyway. _

_ The Butcher let me go, and I gasped in lungfuls of air as if I were breathing for the first time. He stepped back, and he leaned against the trailer of my truck. _

_ I would have punched him, but I was doubled over, still catching my breath. _

_ The officer got out of his car. No partner. He was a big guy. Not fat, just big. Built. Easily three times my size. _

_ It’s apparent, in times like these, just how much of a difference your height can make.  _

_ The officer walked up to the truck. He didn't seem to be in a hurry; honestly, it was like he couldn't care less that I was almost choked to death in a WalMart parking lot. That I was standing here, a bruise already forming around my neck, still attempting to breathe normally. _

_ "What seems to be the problem here" he asked. He sounded bored.  _

_ So I told him.  _

_ I told him about the sounds in my truck, about pulling over, about being attacked. I showed him the bruises. I showed him the paper towels. _

_ He frowned when I was finished. He didn't meet my eyes. _

_ "That true?"  _

_ He asked the Butcher who stood, arms folded, against my truck. Uncaring. _

_ The Butcher only laughed.  _

_ The policeman only shrugged.  _

_ "Doesn't sound true," he said.  _

_ And honestly, Abram? I wasn't sure what to do.  _

_ It’s not like I expected much help in the end. Not from a cop. But this? _

_ This was different. _

_ This wasn’t ‘not being helped’. This was blatantly taking the Butcher’s side. _

_ This, I can honestly say, I was not expecting. _

_ "If he has to come talk to you,” the officer said, “then you're asking the wrong questions."  _

_ He walked back to his car. When he opened the door, he turned around to face us again, an arm resting on the top of the car. _

_ He said, "my advice would be to stop asking the wrong questions." _

_ He tilted his hat at the Butcher.  _

_ "Have a nice night now."  _

_ The Butcher gave a lazy wave. _

_ “I will,” he said. “You know I will.” _

_ And the policeman drove away.  _

_ [a pause] _

_ The Butcher made no other move to attack me. Because the message had been made clear. There was no need to do anything else. _

_ "You see?" he said.  _

_ "Go home," he said. _

_ "Listen," he said.  _

_ "You can still go home," he said. _

_ And then he grinned, a _ _ nd he looked like your father. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I'm alive.  _

_ I'm back on the road, and I'm alive.  _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ He was wrong, you know. I can't go home. Because home wasn't a place. Home was a person. Home was you, and I can't go home, because I don't have you.  _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ A police car has been following me for the last 10 miles. No lights or sirens. Just following me.  _

_ I've attracted their attention. _

_ I’ve made enemies today, and I think things might be more difficult for me from here on out.  _

_ [thump]  _

_ There is noise in my trailer again. Shifting. Rolling. Like an angry caged animal.  _

_ [thump] _

_ I'm not stopping.  _

_ I can't go home.  _

_ [thump] _

_ I can only go on. And on, and on, and on.  _

_ [thump] _

_ Until I can’t anymore. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The noises stopped. The police car is turning off the highway. _

_ I guess they let me off with a warning.  _

_ And I guess that's a warning I'm going to ignore. _

_ [radio clicks off] _


	4. The Billboard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who do follow the podcast, I know this is a bit out of order, but I was too excited about this chapter and the next one to really put it off any more. You'll see why toward the end.
> 
> You also might recognize a bit more dialogue from the podcast than usual. I changed a bit, but some of it I felt really fit things. I wanted to avoid pulling direct quotes from the podcast as much as possible, but Joseph Fink's writing is absolutely next level.
> 
> For the quotes pulled from the podcast, I take no credit, and I hope you can understand when you read it why I chose to keep them.

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ You know what I love more than anything else? _

_ Cruise control. _

_ I love cruise control more than I love most of my family members. _

_ I would throw my family to the wolves if it meant never having to deal with that cramp in your ankle from having to hold the gas pedal at just the right angle in order to maintain that perfect speed on these ridiculous stretches of highway. _

_ But luckily for them, cruise control exists. _

_ [a pause] _

_ Did that billboard have the word “bitch” on it? I probably misread it. I'm too tired. _

_ Whatever. Thank God for cruise control. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter IV: The Billboard.**

* * *

* * *

The drive from Nebraska to Florida was long. Ridiculously long, and ridiculously boring, and most of what Andrew was dealing with now was ridiculously desolate.

There was nothing around him for miles; just stretches of fields, the occasional scattering of cars along the highway, and billboards.

There were a surprising amount of billboards.

It was a one-way conversation that spanned miles, a constant onslaught of religious propaganda and McDonald’s ads. Some, though, really didn’t make much sense at all.

**HUNGRY?** One asked him, though he clearly wasn’t able to answer.

Black text on white background. All caps. Nothing more.

What was that even supposed to be advertising?

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I’ve been going through your laptop. _

_ It was one of the only things I took with me when I left. That, and this stack of books that I’ve long since finished. _

_ Anyway, I’ve been going through your laptop. Is that an invasion of privacy? Going through your dead husband’s records? His emails and his files and everything else? I would consider that doing what needs to be done, in order to sort things out. _

_ But then again, you’re not really dead, so... Does that make it an issue of privacy? Do you _ have _ privacy, now that you’re alive again? I don’t know. You’ve made yourself a mystery, and now everything you left behind is a clue. _

_ You’re a missing persons case, and everything you’ve ever touched is evidence. _

_ Or maybe not. Maybe you’re still just a person, and I am another person snooping through your things. _

_ Maybe I can make peace with that, too. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I’ve been going through our emails to one another. _

_ We used to do that, remember? Email each other? Back when we first started... whatever. Seeing each other? Dating? Kissing on occassion and eventually getting married? I dunno. None of those really feel like good descriptors. _

_ Anyway, I’ve been going through our emails. We wrote letters, too, but most of those have gone missing somewhere. I wonder if you took them. You were always so sentimental about certain things. I feel like that might have been one of them. _

_ Some of your older emails are long. Detailed. Because you never knew when to shut up. _

_ “Hey, ‘Drew.” _

_ Oh, God. Yeah, this was that one time you called me that. And then I shut that shit down real fast. You thought it was hilarious. You only ever used it when you wanted to annoy me. _

_ “Hey, ‘Drew, just checked in. Sammy and some of the others were going out, but I’m tired. You have to know when to say no, like you always say. _

_ “Hotel is way better than any place we could afford. Certainly nicer than any place I stayed in with Mom. It’s still kind of weird, staying in hotels like this. Hotels instead of motels. Five stars instead of negative three. Issues, you'd say. Issues I gotta get over. _

_ “I wish you were with me. Luxury vacation, but not. Sales conference. Who has a sales conference in a hotel this fancy? Diamond pattern on the duvet is kind of nice. Maybe we should look into that for home.” _

_ Goes on for paragraphs. Entire paragraphs. _

_ Our more recent emails are short. They reference text messages we made, or posts that we both saw. We scattered our communication out. _

_ Not less of it, just in more places. Harder to follow from a distance. It’s a blur, not a narrative. _

_ It was a gradual acceptance that this was something permanent. That we could settle enough to scatter ourselves out and still remember that we have a central point to fall back to. That we had each other, waiting at home. _

_ [a pause] _

_ Hmm. More emails from you. _

_ “Orlando is hot, though, isn’t it, Kroshka?” _

_ Oh, you thought you were clever with that one, didn’t you? _

_"Kroshka." _

_"Crumb."_

_ “Get it,” you’d said. “Because you’re small.” _

_ God I hate you. _

_ “Orlando is hot. Seems like it should be obvious, but I had forgotten what the heat combined with the humidity feels like on my skin. I haven’t been back here since I left with Mom. That has to have been about five or six years ago, now. _

_ “The reality of heat is harder to take than the idea of it. I guess that’s anything, really. I guess I’m describing to you absolutely everything that’s ever been. I’m going to knock that off and say that the view of the ocean from my room would be beautiful, if it existed. I’m looking at a pool that’s been drained for some reason. Huge cockroach right in the middle of it. _

_ “I live a glamorous life for us, Kroshka. Don’t I?” _

_ [a pause] _

_ I hate you so much. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

**BERNARD HAMILTON.**

Andrew watched as the billboard passed by, and he wondered if this was some weird marketing ploy that he was supposed to take part in. Was he supposed to Google the name, or something?

The billboard was the same as the one that read **HUNGRY?**. Black text, white background, nothing more.

A majority of the other billboards on this stretch of highway were ancient. They advertised local concerts from 2005, deals at Blockbuster or Radio Shack or some local Chinese food restaurant that’s probably been out of business for years. A lot of them were blank, covered in phone numbers and fax information letting drivers know that the space was for rent.

Why anyone would want to rent a billboard out here, Andrew wasn’t sure.

Maybe he should do it. Put up some bullshit missing person’s report. It would probably be pretty cheap, considering the location. And it’s not like it could be any worse than talking into this stupid radio, with no one on the other end, an endless transmission to his runaway husband who isn’t even listening, who couldn’t care less about what Andrew was currently doing.

Dig a hole just to shout into it, and all that.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Emails are one thing. Bank statements are another. _

_ I understand, now, why you were always so resistant to merging our finances. _

_ “It’s been 6 years,” I said. “We share all our expenses,” I said. “It will make it way easier if one of us dies,” I said. _

_ But then, neither of us died, did we? Look how wrong I was. _

_ So, Abram, payments for years. Directly into your private savings account. Long before I had even a hint that anything was off. _

_ Big payments. Regular ones, too. A salary, one would guess, looking at them. _

_ But you had a job. Or, I thought you did. _

_ So who was paying you a second salary? And for what? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ “Kroshka, I’m checking into the Hampton Inn right now. Honestly? This is much more my speed. None of that fancy stuff, and they have mediocre coffee for free in the lobby. _

_ “The conference is tomorrow, so I have a day to explore everything that Simi Valley has to offer. Which is… well. It’s right outside my hotel door, so I don’t have to go far (already a plus). There’s the Reagan Library that I can spend a satisfactory five minutes thinking about never visiting, lots of hills and rocks that look like the backdrop in an old western (mainly ‘cause they were). _

_ “Found a weirdly good shaved ice place, and you know how I like that. It’s a lot more tolerable than the ice cream and frozen yogurt you pack the freezer with. That’s about it. Love you – ” _

_ [a pause] _

_ “Love you, Kroshka. See you home soon.” _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ So here’s what I’m having trouble with. Here’s the question mark in the bullshit. _

_ There isn’t a Hampton Inn in Simi Valley. _

_ I mean, that’s a little thing, really. A small detail in an otherwise normal email. Maybe you were staying in a town nearby, I thought, the first time I read it. Maybe you were driving _ into _ Simi Valley. _

_ Except, no. You said specifically that it was right in Simi Valley. _

_ A little thing. But that’s not even it. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

**ROBIN CROSS.**

Another billboard. One that looked almost brand new; it stood out, stark against the mid-day sky.

“Who’s paying for you?” Andrew asked the billboard. The billboard didn’t respond.

He supposed he should be grateful for the change in scenery. A landscape full of nothing, you end up being grateful for little bits of something.

If nothing else, the advertisement was working. He was certainly wondering about whatever the hell it was they were trying to sell.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I looked up historical weather data. That’s what you’ve reduced me to, Abram. Fucking weather data. _

_ It was cold in Orlando that weekend. The weekend you were supposedly there. They had a cold snap. Highs in the low 50s and windy. I guess you thought saying it was hot was a safe assumption. _

_ Little lies all through your emails to me. Everything not adding up to everything else, again and again. And all of them small, easy to dismiss on their own. Not pronounced enough to connect the dots until you’re really looking. _

_ And I wasn’t looking. Because when you were home, I didn’t feel lies from you at all. You were an open, honest presence in the lies that surrounded our lives. _

_ We made a deal. _

_ We told the truth. _

_ You promised me, no more lies. _

_ Was I a fool? _

_ I think the you on the road wasn’t the you that was home. When it was just the two of us at home -- and I want you to think about this, Abram, I want you to remember -- when it was just the two of us, it wasn’t like being alone, but it also wasn’t like being with another person. It was something in between. _

_ It was all the benefits of being alone, with none of the downsides. _

_ But those emails… you thought you had a good reason to lie. You weren’t sneaking around; you had a purpose. You were playing martyr, somehow, for something that you refused to tell me, probably in some bullshit attempt at thinking you were protecting me. _

_ That’s why I couldn’t feel anything closed off from you when you came home. _

_ Where were you going on those trips? Those constant trips you had to take for work. What were you doing? And who was paying you a regular secret salary to do it? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

**TRACY DRUMMOND.**

This was the fifth billboard in as many miles. All the same, black text on white background. All names.

Andrew sighed. He pulled out his phone, and he Googled the name.

Tracy Drummond’s name was on a list of other names. All from the billboards that Andrew had passed. The names of people found near major highways, bodies dumped all over the country. All killed by a human bite in the neck or shoulder.

The bites weren’t elegant. They weren’t slashes, or pinpricks, or done with practiced hands.

They were ragged, ugly, massive bites, spilling blood until they died. They died alone on the sides of highways -- or, more likely, they were not alone.

“The Hungry Man”, the media called him. They called him a serial killer. Reports said that the police have been searching for almost two decades.

He only kills occasionally, the reports said. Leaves behind bodies only every now and then, lives cut short with too-straight teeth.

They were killed by the Butcher.

Another billboard passed by the truck.

**NED FLYNN.**

Andrew didn’t need to look at the list to know what his name meant.

The Butcher was leaving him a trail. He was telling him exactly who he was; he was the Hungry Man, and he wouldn’t stop eating. He wanted him to know. Wanted to leave the billboards as messages. The names. Dots on a map. Last known whereabouts.

Andrew was a dot on the map too, only he had yet to stop moving.

Another billboard crawled its way across the horizon. Andrew read it once the words were clear.

He pulled his truck over.

He stopped moving.

* * *

**KROSHKA.**

**MISS YOU.**

**GO HOME.**

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Well, now. Well, well, well, well, now. _

_ It wasn’t the Butcher that left me these billboards, was it? _

_ “Go home.” _

_ Why? Hmm? Because I’m not safe? _

_ You think I’m safe anywhere? _

_ You think you can keep me safe? _

_ You think safety is an option that’s available to me? _

_ I haven’t been safe since I was born into this country. This angry, seething, stupid, could-be-so-much-more-than-it-is country. And _ you’re _ going to keep me safe? _

_ Or is it because I would get in the way? Or because you don’t want me to look for you, and I should respect your feelings? Should let you continue with your martyr act, let you continue to look out for me after I’ve told you, time and time again, that I refuse to let you. Because you have it backwards, Abram. I don’t need protecting. _

_ [a pause] _

_ [a breath] _

_ “Go home,” you said. _

_ Huh. Don’t you remember what you told me, once, a long time ago? _

_ If it means losing you, then no. _

_ Because here’s what else I found. _

_ I found the source of those payments. It was buried deep. Deep in a folder on your laptop. It was past the school essays you wrote, saved in file formats that your computer can’t read anymore. It was past the photos from your semester abroad of you smiling next to Jean with the Eiffel Tower as a blur of light in the distance. It was past the letters, past the emails, past the system files. Oh, Abram. This folder was well hidden, but I found it. _

_ Payment information. Paperwork matching each of the mystery deposits in your account. _

_ Everything matches, and I still don’t understand. _

_ Fox Shipping Company. The company whose truck I’m sitting in right now. _

_ You were lying to me. Every convention you ever went to for work, you were somewhere other than the place you told me. And some trucking company, Fox Shipping, was paying you to do it. _

_ You promised me the truth, Abram. In your vows, in your smile, in whispers at night under the blankets on our bed. _

_ You promised me the truth, and instead, you were lying to me for years. _

_ What was worth my trust? _

_ What was worth the life we had together? _

_ Abram, I- _

_ [a pause] _

_ There’s something lying by the side of the road, under the billboard you left me. A pile of clothes, or… no, that’s a human shape. A human shape that’s moving. It’s standing, now. Turning. Shaking out its shoulders, stretching out its arms. It’s- _

_ It’s a girl. _

_ A teenager. _

_ She’s staring at me. _

_ What is she doing by the side of the highway like this? There are far worse things than men circling these roads. _

_ She’s coming over to my truck. _

_ [shuffling, moving, then a muffled shout] _

_ Hey. Hey, are you okay? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't speak Russian but when I Googled "terms of endearment" Kroshka came up and I mean do you really expect me NOT to make a joke about that? Please.
> 
> Anyway I'm very excited for the next few chapters. I hope you all are enjoying this.
> 
> I'm very grateful to all of the comments and encouraging words! It means the world to me.


	5. Robin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters in one day because I cannot help myself I am in too deep someone stop me

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Robin is asleep in the passenger seat. Part of me wishes that I could sleep, too, but we have a destination, now. Somewhere to be. I don’t know what will be there when we arrive, but it’s a step at least. It’s a direction, even if I don’t know where that direction will take me. _

_ And it’s thanks to Robin that I have it. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter V: Robin.**

* * *

* * *

If he was being honest with himself, Andrew probably should have left the girl on the side of the road.

As it was, though, his better nature won out, and he allowed her into his truck.

“What do you know,” she asked. It was out of her mouth before her ass even touched the passenger seat. She kicked over his stack of books to make room for her feet. 

“Lots of things,” Andrew said, and the girl scoffed. “I know you’re a kid, first of all, who shouldn’t be laying underneath billboards all by herself on the side of the fucking road. So I guess if we’re making a list, we should start with that.”

“You stopped to look at the billboards,” she said. “You were just sitting there, staring at one of them in particular. Like you were ready to drive directly into the pole holdin’ it up. So  _ I _ know that you know somethin’. Somethin’ about whoever put those signs up on the road.”

Andrew didn’t say anything. He started the truck and pulled out onto the highway.

She smelled very strongly of something that Andrew couldn’t place. It wasn’t a  _ bad _ smell, exactly. Just.. odd. Earthy. Different. Like a walk in a park condensed into something that she had dumped all over her body. Not some floral perfume. Something more natural.

“Okay,” the girl said after a moment of silence. “Maybe you don’t know anything.” She shrugged, getting comfortable in the seat. She put one foot on the dashboard. Her sneakers were filthy, and Andrew wanted to reach over and shove it off. He didn’t.

She flashed him a look as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. And then she shrugged.

“Maybe I don’t know anything, either.”

Andrew had a list of questions he wanted to ask her, but he started with the most obvious.

“What’s your name?”

There was a pause before the girl answered.

“Robin,” she said. “Robin Cross.”

“I’ve heard that name before,” Andrew said. He couldn’t place where, though.

“Common name, I guess,” she said. She looked out the window.

They drove in silence for what felt like a few hours, until they were almost to Andrew’s destination for his next shipment. It was just outside of Atlanta.

“No offense,” Robin said suddenly, and Andrew flicked her a look out of the corner of his eye. “I just don’t know if I can trust you.”

“And I don’t know if you can, either,” Andrew said. “Considering I have no idea what I’m supposed to be trusted with.”

Robin hummed.

“You’ve seen it all, too,” she said. “The visions out on the highway. The road takes weird turns for you, same as it does for me. Doesn’t it?”

“What have you seen?” Andrew asked.

“What have  _ you _ seen?” Robin countered.

“I’ll tell if you tell.”

“How do I know you will?”

“Guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

Robin was quiet for a moment, and then she sighed.

“My mom and I used to travel a lot,” she said. “She had a job that moved her from place to place. And I would tag along with her, of course. Only, as time went on, we began to notice things. Things that don’t really... Belong. Things that got lost in the secret spaces of the world, like rest stop bathrooms or alleys behind a Dunkin’ Donuts. Things that other people were missin’. There’s somethin’ dangerous out there. There’s a crack, somewhere in the universe, and somethin’ terrible is seepin’ through.”

“Do you know what it is?” Andrew asked.

“Your turn,” Robin said instead.

And so Andrew told her.

When he was finished, Robin was quiet again. She stared out the window for a few minutes, and when she spoke, it was to the scenery passing by, a blur of color and motion that couldn’t be pinpointed.

“Don’t you wish, sometimes, that you could forget?” She asked. “That you could just have your memory wiped, and then you wouldn’t be a person wandering, but a person who was almost... somewhere? A person about to arrive? And when you arrived, you could just stay?”

There was a pause, and then she turned to look at Andrew.

“You could just stay.”

Andrew nodded, once, and Robin sighed and fell back into the seat.

“Yeah. God, yeah, me too,” she said. And that was that.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Do you remember the house in Columbia? _

_ The one that I lived in when we first met in high school. The one that I grew up in with Aaron and Bee, the one that Nicky moved into with us when his parents kicked him out. The one that we shared our first kiss in. The one that you would visit on weekends when your Uncle Stuart would drive you up the wall with his nagging. The one that you came back to after your mother took you, and your father found you, and the police saved you. _

_ Do you remember? _

_ You still came back. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

When Andrew dropped off his shipment, Robin hid.

He hadn’t asked her to, but she had anyway, tucked on the floor of the cab as she flipped through his collection of books.

After his delivery was finished and he had climbed back into the cab, Robin climbed back into the passenger seat. She held up his copy of  _ Ender’s Shadow _ with a raised eyebrow.

“This any good?” she asked.

“Yes,” Andrew responded. “But you should read  _ Ender’s Game _ first.”

“Okay,” she said, and considered it a moment before tossing it into the back of the cab. She pulled her knees to her chest. “Hey, I need to ask you somethin’. Or... I need to ask you to  _ do  _ somethin’, and I can’t tell you why. Would you do it?”

Andrew shrugged.

“Probably,” he said.

Robin nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “I need to go to Swansea, South Carolina. Can you take me?”

Andrew was quiet for a long moment.

“South Carolina is in the opposite direction of where I’m going,” he said. Sidestepping. Avoiding. Refusing to acknowledge the fact that was in front of him. “I have to go to-”

“I know.” She cut him off. “I know. And I’m sorry. I really wish I could tell you everything, but I can’t. I really can’t. But... I’m askin' you. And you’re the first person I’ve actually talked to in... God. In weeks, at least. I just... I need to go to Swansea. It has to do with, you know-”

She waved her hand in a vague gesture that Andrew took to mean “everything”.

Andrew tapped a finger on the steering wheel. He thought. He considered. He decided.

“Fine,” he said. “But we make a stop first.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Columbia hasn’t changed at all. _

_ The street that the house is on is almost exactly the same. I think the Petersons painted their garage beige instead of grey, but other than that, nothing is different. _

_ The house is exactly the same, too. _

_ Bee isn’t home. At least I hope she isn’t. Or if she is, she doesn’t realize that I’m sitting out front in a rental car like some kind of stalker because a massive eighteen-wheeler would be blatantly obvious on a small suburban street. I left Robin with the truck at a rest stop a few miles from here. I’ll head back in a bit. _

_ [a pause] _

_ I haven’t talked to Bee since I left. She was pretty against me leaving, as you can probably imagine. So was Aaron. And Nicky. And Renee. But I couldn’t just sit around forever, Abram. I had to find you. _

_ Bee was too good for me. Too good for me and Aaron. She was always there, you know? Always so fucking understanding. I hated that, when I was younger. Hated the fact that she always knew what I needed, always knew when to ease up or when to push harder to get me to do something. _

_ And then you left, and she took me on as a patient, too. I can just hear you saying it’s a conflict of interest. That I can’t be her patient because she was basically my mother. Why would I drive all the way to her office in Columbia just to talk to her the same way I could over the phone? _

_ I think it had something to do with the disconnect. The fact that she was the only person I knew well enough to trust, but the one person that I wouldn’t have been able to handle pity from. So she treated me like another client. It helped. _

_ She was a good guardian. I don’t think I ever thanked her. Remind me to thank her when this is all over and we go home. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Swansea was not a very crowded town. It was only half an hour from Columbia, and Andrew could remember coming here a few times throughout his life. Everything was nice, but half-empty. It wasn’t what it used to be. There was less life here than there once was.

Robin directed him to an EZ Stop off the side of the highway. It was across from a closed up farm stand and not one, but two car washes. Both of which were also closed. He pulled the truck up to the side of the EZ Stop and killed the engine. He hoped that Robin wasn’t hoping for subtlety; though he assumed that if that’s what she was going for, she would have had him keep the rental car.

“What now?” Andrew asked, and Robin leaned into the back of the cab and pulled out his copy of  _ Ender’s Game _ .

“We wait,” she said, and opened the book to start reading.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The first time I kissed you, I was seventeen. _

_ We were in my room in the Columbia house. The sun was setting in the window, and the sky was pink bleeding into lilac. The sun made your hair a darker shade of red. Your eyes were bright, though, and you stared at me as if I held the answers of the universe. _

_ I had known you for a year and a half. You were the transfer student that was too interesting to ignore. You captured my attention and never let it go. You understood me. I understood you. _

_ I kissed you on the edge of my bed on a Tuesday. Your lips were chapped and trembling. _

_ When I pulled back, you chased after me, and one kiss turned into another, and then another, and then another. _

_ Your mother took you and ran three weeks later. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Three and a half hours later, the sky shifted from blue to black. Robin began to fidget.

“He should have been here by now,” she said. 

“Who?” Andrew asked, but Robin just shook her head.

“Let’s... Let’s just ask inside.”

They climbed out of the ruck and made their way into the EZ Stop. The man behind the counter looked bored. He greeted them when they entered, and went back to flipping the pages of the magazine he held. Robin walked up to the counter, and leaned against it.

“Have you seen a police car around here today?” She asked, and the man’s head shot up to look at her. “Specifically a cop car from Georgia?”

The man’s expression turned from bored to terrified. He looked panicked, and he shook his head. His eyes darted to the door of the shop, and Andrew knew he had seen something that he desperately wished he could forget.

Andrew moved up to stand beside Robin, and spoke.

“Look at me,” he said, and the man did. “Look me in the eye. I know what you’ve seen tonight. I’ve seen terrible things too, and so has this girl. And al long as we’re all quiet, nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to change. Those terrible things are going to keep happening. Do you want to live in a world like that? Where you are partially responsible for allowing it to continue?”

The man’s expression twisted, and he looked pained.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice shook. Andrew sighed.

“Fine,” he said, and he leaned across the counter to pluck at the man’s collared uniform. “Fine. We’ll play it a different way, then.”

He let his mouth fall into a smile. An old smile, his cold smile, one that he tried to forget that he owned. His gaze became lazy, but his grip on the man’s collar was sharp. He pulled a knife from one of his armbands.

“Whatever you’re scared of isn’t here right now,” Andrew said, his voice low and calculating. “But I am. And I can promise you, I can be so much scarier.”

This was a lie, but the man didn’t know that. Andrew was the only one who did.

“I--” the man started, and his eyes shifted to the back door of the EZ Stop. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Andrew followed his gaze, and let the man go. He and Robin exited the shop and move into the thick trees that surrounded the stoor. They didn’t have to search very long before they came across the police cruiser that had been rolled into the shade of the trees.

There was no blood, but the seats were shredded. Its computer destroyed. Any evidence wiped.

Robin collapsed onto the hood of the car. She just went limp, giving up, laying on her back on the hood of the cruiser as she looked up into the canopy of the trees. She stayed like that for a full minute, silent, letting whatever hope she had allowed to build in herself fade.

And then she told Andrew a story.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ For two years, you were gone. _

_ I sat in that house, day after day, and was helpless in knowing what had happened to you. _

_ There was no explanation. There was no information about where you had gone. Stuart refused to talk. The police did nothing to help.  _

_ You were dead. A ghost on the run. The boy whose mother stole him away in the night. _

_ For two years, I waited. For two years, I was torn between believing that you were alive and knowing that you were most likely dead. For two years, it was all I could do to continue living without knowing where you were. _

_ And then you came home. _

_ You were practically in pieces, more scars than person, but I couldn’t care less. You were there, you were breathing, you were looking at me the way you had on that Tuesday in my bedroom. _

_ You told us your father had been released from prison, and your mother had taken you and run. You told us that he had found you, after two years, and you had barely made it out alive. _

_ You told us that you came home, because we were the only home you really ever knew. _

_ That  _ I _ was the only home you really ever knew. _

_ Because home isn’t a place. _

_ Home is a person. _

_ Your home was me, and my home was you. _

_ And you came back home, Abram. _

_ So why would you leave it again? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Robin and her mother had seen the Butcher a couple hours north of New York City. Or, as he was known to them, the Hungry Man. They saw him take a man from his car. They saw what he did to the man. The same way Andrew had seen what he had done to Earl. The same thing that was almost done to him.

And Robin’s mother tried to do something that she shouldn’t have: she tried to intervene. She started asking questions.

After that, Robin didn’t have a mother. She went back to Georgia, and was moved from home to home. No one believed her story, or believed what she had seen. Or, more likely, no one would admit that they believed her.

There was one policeman, Officer Campbell, who took a special interest in her. He warned her that she needed to stop telling people what she had seen, that she needed to stop asking questions. He told her it would be easier if she just let it go.

But that wasn’t an option for Robin.

So she had run away, and went searching for what scared her the most.

“You went looking for the Butcher?” Andrew asked. “He’s dangerous.”

He could still feel the Butcher’s arm on his throat. Could still feel his breath on his skin.

“Oh, is he?” Robin asked. Sarcasm dripped from her mouth like honey. “I had no idea. I must be stupid.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Andrew said.

“Yes it was,” Robin said. “You just didn’t know it was what you meant.”

“Well,” Andrew said. “If the shoe fits, I suppose.”

Arm against throat, over and over.

“Anyway,” Robin said, though the corners of her mouth twitched upward in a hollow smile. “A few months ago I checked my email on the computer of a friend of a friend that was letting me crash with them for a bit, yeah? And there was an email from Campbell. Said that since I was clearly not going to let this go, he wanted to help me, at least. But I needed to keep it secret for both our sakes. Told me to meet him here on this day, and he would give me the information that I needed. All of it.

“I think he hoped I could put a stop to it,” she said, folding her arms behind her head as she looked up at the trees. “I don’t think he knew what he had signed up for.”

“And now, here’s his car,” Andrew said, eyeing the cruiser. He believed it was safe to assume that there would not be a trace left of Officer Campbell in the world after today.

Robin sighed, pushing off of the cruiser and heading back toward the truck. Andrew followed. They could both feel it; like they couldn’t afford to hang around much longer.

“Okay,” Robin said as she pulled herself into the cab. “Okay. He was based out of a precinct in Savannah. We can go there, see if he left anything, and then get the fuck out.”

Andrew raised an eyebrow.

“You expect me to help you rob a police station?”

Robin shrugged. “If you wouldn’t mind, that would certainly be helpful.”

Andrew stared at her for a long moment in silence. And then he shrugged, too.

“Sure,” he said. “Fuck it. Let’s go rob a police station.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I need you to understand, Abram. I need you to understand why I’m searching. _

_ I promised you, that day that you stumbled back into our house after two years of being gone. You sat, bandaged and broken and bloody on our living room floor, your hands gripping at my sweater as you told me that your demons were put to rest. _

_ I promised you, then, that I would never let you go again. _

_ And you promised me, then, that you would never run. _

_ I promised to protect you. I promised to give you a home, to make you feel safe, to love you until my last breath. _

_ Did I break my promise, Abram? Or did you break yours? _

_ You can tell me when I find you. _

_ Because I already lost you once. I will not lose you again. _

_ [radio clicks off] _


	6. Let's Break Into a Police Station

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I need to sleep eventually. _

_ But every moment I spend sleeping is a moment I’m not driving. Hopefully. And this is one long, long drive. But it’s okay, because I have a good story to tell on the way. _

_ Let me tell you about how we broke into a police station. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter VI: Let’s Break Into a Police Station.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Stopped for lunch in this place just outside of Savannah. Fried things, cheesy things, sweet tea. The place had all these lunch boxes, old ones with blocky cartoons in action poses. _

_ “Have fun with it,” the lunch boxes said. “And also, stuff yourself.” _

_ I had been on the move for almost a day by then, and I was actually pretty hungry. I had only just left Savannah, but it wasn’t like I had time to stop for a sandwich after everything that happened. So I listened to the lunch boxes. I stuffed myself. _

_ I realized my mistake shortly after, when the food began to settle and I felt like I might pass out at any moment. So I figured it might be better to stop off at a rest stop and sleep rather than risk plowing my truck into some unknown stretch of highway. I’ve been through too much just to die sleeping at the wheel like some kind of moron. _

_ So I pulled into a Motel 6, got a room, and slept. When I woke up I felt better than I had in days. Well. Besides all of the bruises. And the slash on my torso. But it was still nice, I guess. _

_ I took a shower after. My first shower in... Fuck, too long, if I’m being honest with you. _ That _ was good for the soreness of the bruises, though. I watched the water pool around my feet in a beige bathtub. Somehow I couldn’t look away. I stood there for a long time, watching water run through my toes. _

_ And then I was back in the driver’s seat, and back on the road, and back out of Georgia. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“What do you smell like?” Andrew asked, pulling off the freeway to enter Savannah. “I seriously can’t place it.”

“I was wonderin’ how long you’d be polite,” Robin said. She sounded amused. “It’s heather oil.”

Andrew frowned. “Why are you wearing heather oil?”

Robin shrugged, sagging back into her seat. “I dunno,” she said truthfully. “I heard the Butcher doesn’t like it. Heard it wards him off. I mean, it’s probably bullshit, but...”

She shrugged again.

“Where did you hear that?” Andrew asked. Robin scoffed.

“You think our lives are the only lives he’s touched? You think we’re the only ones who have gotten away? I’ve been traveling this country looking for answers a lot longer than you have, you know. I may be younger in age, but you’re younger in your journey.” She gave him a thoughtful look. “Though honestly, most people didn’t care enough to help me. So thanks.”

“Bad news,” Andrew said. “I don’t care, either. I don’t care about anything. Went to therapy for it and everything.”

“It’s not important if you don’t care,” Robin said. “You’re helpin’ anyway.” 

She was quiet for a bit, seeming to sort something out in her head. Once she seemed to string the words together, she turned in her seat to face Andrew.

“You can try to control your feelin’s, but you’re never really gonna be able to when it gets down to it,” she said. “You can’t control when your fear decides to show up. Or you anger, or your sadness, or when you _ do _ decide to care. But you can control what you do while you’re feelin’ it. I learned that.”

“From our hard-fought life on the road?” Andrew asked. Robin let out a huff of amusement.

“Nope. From therapy.” She looked at Andrew, who pointedly did not look back. “Therapy bros?”

The corner of Andrew’s lips twitched, and that was enough answer for Robin.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I am _ not _ avoiding Columbia, just so you’re aware. _

_ Just because I’m driving up through South Carolina again does not mean that I need to stop there. There’s nothing there for me, anyway. I already checked in on Bee, and it’s not like I want to go and talk to her anyway. Aaron and his wife live in Chicago. Nicky is off in Germany. _

_ So no, I’m not _ avoiding _ Columbia. _

_ There’s just no reason for me to go back until I have you. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew stopped the truck a few blocks away from the station. If they were going to figure out how to break into and rob a police station, the last thing they needed was a blatantly obvious truck sitting right outside their front doors.

The front of the building was all one big glass window. The rest was heavy cinder blocks. There were barred windows, no back door, and nothing that could be crawled into or out of. It was a box with a single opening, and that opening was directly on the street, and directly in front of the lobby filled with police officers. Andrew had been arrested once. He didn’t exactly wish to go back.

Even casing the place was a challenge. There were cops everywhere; leaning against the walls talking, coming in and out of the building on calls, staring at the two of them as they attempted to casually walk by.

“Could we just run in and run out?” Robin asked, slightly irritated, as they stood across the street.

“There’s only one door,” Andrew pointed out. “You could run in all you want, but it might be a bit hard to get back out.”

They circled the block for a fourth time. An officer across the street eyed them with open suspicion. Andrew thought back to a WalMart parking lot in Nebraska, and could feel his heart rattling in his cage. He steeled his expression. Robin didn’t need to know.

“Stay here,” Andrew said. “I’m going to look down the alley. Meet me on the other side.”

He circled the precinct and ducked down the alley. At the far end was a dumpster, pushed up against the wall of the building. Andrew stared at it for a long moment, and then sighed. He pulled himself onto the dumpster.

From there he climbed onto the roof, and army-crawled his way across so that he wouldn’t be seen and they wouldn’t hear footsteps below. There were skylights on the roof, about four or five, and he crawled over to the edge of one. When he looked down, he was directly above a desk.

He crawled his way back, hopped off the roof as casually as someone could while jumping from rooftop to dumpster (which is to say, not very), and met back up with Robin.

“I need you to make a distraction,” he said, and Robin frowned.

“What kind?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew said. “But I need you to do something very stupid and very loud so that _ I _can do something very stupid and very loud.”

Robin’s frown shifted after a moment of thought into one of pure excitement.

“I know just what to do.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Baltimore is a shit town, Abram. _

_ We’re never coming here on vacation. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew climbed back onto the roof, and he waited. He couldn’t see anything that was happening on the ground, but he supposed that he shouldn’t have to; if he couldn’t figure out when Robin’s distraction was, then it wasn’t big enough. 

And then the distraction came and it was certainly big enough.

It went like this:

Robin had gone a few blocks down. She had broken into a car. She had hot-wired it, pointed it at the glass front of the police station, stuck a brick on the gas pedal, and rolled out.

It wasn’t going fast enough to hurt anyone. And honestly, it didn’t do more than make an extremely loud noise as it took out the glass of the station, but it wasn’t something that could exactly be stopped, either.

Some of the officers ran after her, but Robin had planned a route that had gotten her into hiding before they had even rounded the corner. She had been on the road by herself for a long time. And when you stick a kid with everything to lose into a place this dangerous, they know how to disappear.

When the car broke through the station, Andrew began stomping on the glass until the skylight caved. It was loud and it was messy, but the officers were much too busy dealing with the midsize sedan now rolling into their check-in desks.

Andrew jumped through the skylight.

There were five desks in the building, and he hunted down Campbell’s with little trouble. He didn’t bother looking through what he was grabbing; he took it all. Anything on top of the desk and anything in his drawers, he tossed it all into the book bag that Robin had provided him.

It was time to get out.

And, as Andrew looked up at the skylight that was very much out of reach, and the gathering of shouting cops at the front of the building, he realized his mistake.

He was standing at the back of a building with one blocked exit, and his only alternate route was out of reach.

Fuck.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Oh, that was a turnoff for some seaside town Nicky had told us about a few years ago. At least I think that was the one. Maybe I should go there. Buy some crystals, maybe some incense, relax a bit. Nicky would get a kick out of that if I told him. _

_ Or maybe I could just get some coffee from a vending machine at a gas station instead. _

_ There are choices in life, and I take some of them. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

It had been less than a minute and attention was still drawn to the car in the lobby. But Andrew knew that with each passing second, he risked someone heading back to where he was. And then he would be fucked.

For a split second, he thought about hiding, and maybe waiting until everyone went away for they night. He could sneak out when they were closed. And then he thought about it for more than a second and realized that first of all, that would most likely not happen in a police station.

And second of all, they would most likely not leave a police station unattended when it was _ missing its entire front wall _.

He cursed, once, and then turned back to the skylight. He tried to jump.

God, he hated being short.

He looked around, the calm corners of his mind slowly inching more toward panicked. And finally, he made a decision.

He climbed onto Campbell’s desk.

He turned toward the skylight.

He took half a step back, and launched himself upward.

He sucked in his stomach in some half-assed attempt to not get skewered on the bits of glass that were still stuck in the skylight, sticking out like razors and glinting in the afternoon sun. His hands scrambled for purchase on the roof, and his chest slammed into the edge, and he felt something tear and then something warm across his chest, but he wasn’t entirely skewered. So that was something.

But even with the excitement of the car, there was no way that no one would notice a fully grown man leaping up into a skylight from the edge of a desk. Andrew’s hands were burning and his chest was on fire and he could hear shouts coming from below him and he could practically _ feel _ the hands that would grasp around his ankle to haul him back in and feed him to the Butcher on a silver platter and-

He refused to get caught. He refused to die like this.

He pulled himself up through the skylight through sheer determination alone. He tore across the roof, leaped off the side, and landed on top of the dumpster that did less to slow his fall than it did to twist his ankle. He climbed off of the dumpster and half-ran, half-limped around the side of the building.

Five officers rounded the front of the station, and they all immediately locked onto Andrew. He let out another curse as he hobbled down the alley.

And then Robin showed up.

She came sliding in behind the officers, hands cupped around her mouth to amplify her voice.

“Hey, assholes!” She called, and they all paused for a moment. Andrew took the time to add some distance between them. “How’s your front window?”

Three of them turned on her, and she was gone before they could even move.

Andrew honestly didn’t know how he lost the other two. He simply ran. He never looked back, never stopped half-running, until he got back to the truck, scrambling inside to assess his wounds and wait for Robin. The right side of his chest was slashed open; shallow, manegable, and he had just finished wrapping it in gauze and tape when Robin threw herself in the passenger seat.

“Go!” She cried, out of breath and grinning like an idiot. “Drive!”

Andrew did.

\--

They stopped in a parking lot of a Target to go through what Andrew had grabbed. It was a lot of nothing -- reports that were irrelevant, parking citations, ticket quotas, reminders of policies. And emails. Lots and lots of emails. This aspect would have been very helpful, if his emails had been about anything other than his day to day life and the spam mail that accompanied it.

“Hey,” Robin said, an hour into reading Campbell’s emails, in which Andrew was becoming very familiar with his thoughts on Star Trek canon. “What about this?”

It was a list of cities, hand-written on the back of one of his emails. There were about ten of them, most crossed out or with question marks beside them, but it was what was written at the top of the page that had Andrew reaching for his bag in the back of the cab, pulling out some of the old notes that Neil had written and scattered across their home.

_ Vector-J _

There it was, written on the top of Campbell’s list.

And there it was, scribbled on the back of a receipt from a 7-Eleven, in Neil’s chicken scratch scrawl.

“Yeah,” Andrew said after a long moment of silence. “Yeah. This is something.”

One of the towns on the list had been circled. Robin looked up at Andrew, and pointed to it.

“That’s as good of a next step as I think we’re gonna get," she said, and Andrew agrees. He nodded his head.

“Okay,” Robin said. “Great. Do you have an iPhone hookup in here or somethin’? I think it’s gonna be a pretty long drive.”

She laughed. Andrew did not. He looked at Robin. Really _ looked _ at her, and he remembered exactly how young she was. Sixteen years old was not a great age to be, and driving head-first into what was more than likely a death sentence was not something that Andrew wanted to be responsible for.

“You’re not coming,” he said, and Robin scrambled to sit up in her seat, eyes blazing.

“What?”

“You’re not coming,” Andrew repeated, and Robin sneered.

“You can kick me out if you want,” she said, voice dripping with venom. “Be a dick after everything. Fine. But I’ll find another way there, you know. I’m not just going to sit here and do nothing.”

“I’m not asking you to do nothing,” Andrew said, voice even, and Robin’s anger stuttered.

“This is most likely the kind of thing that someone doesn’t come back from,” Andrew continued. “And I am going to go and see it through. Let me be the piece that gets sacrificed, here. You have a lot more to do.

“Like you said, you’ve been on this journey a lot longer than I have. And you are not a fool. Whatever it is that we’re working against, they should be very afraid of you. Because I think you are the best chance at stopping it.

“But you can’t stop anything if you are dead. And if you get killed poking around some town that may or may not even have any answers, then it would all be for nothing.” He stared at her, silent, until she nodded. “Either way, I am going. Either way, I am going to do something about this. I’m going to look into it. But I need you to be smarter than me. I need you to lay low, and keep your ear to the ground to hear what you can, and I need you to grow, and I need you to get smarter than you are now. Because you are our best chance, Robin. And so I need you to stay alive.”

He did not say please. He did not try and reach out to touch her. She would either agree with him or she wouldn’t. She was old enough to know which.

She glared at Andrew for a long time. Her arms were crossed. And then, after three minutes of silence, she nodded again. Once.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Okay.”

Andrew dropped her off at an Extended Stay America. He paid for a room for a few weeks for her, and told her again to lay low. They said their goodbyes, and then he was back in his truck, and he was alone again.

He had two stops on his list.

The second may be his last.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Delaware is a small state. Sometimes, after traveling for so long through the big ones, you forget what the small ones are really like. _

_ I have one more delivery to make. I guess I could have skipped it, if I wanted to. Headed straight for the place that was circled on Campbell’s list instead. But just in case I die there, I think I would rather this lumber get delivered first. See the job through, and all that. _

_ So I have one stop to make before I drive off to California. _

_ I have a stop at a factory by the sea. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gotten a few comments saying they're not sure if Robin is dead or not.
> 
> Listen I already told you guys that Abram Isn't Dead so where would the fun be if I told you about Robin? ((-:
> 
> ((But seriously thank you so much for your guys' comments they give me so much motivation and I am so grateful to you all I promise things will be answered.......... eventually))


	7. The Factory On the Bay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All credit for direct quotes (as well as the whole premise of course) goes to Joseph Fink.

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I’m driving away now. Away from the factory. _

_ My feet are wet and my hands are full of splinters. I’ll try to forget what I saw there, but won’t be able to. _

_ I’ll never forget what happened at the factory on the bay._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter VII: The Factory On the Bay.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Delaware is a small state. _

_ I already said this, I know, but I feel like it bears repeating. The ocean is nice, though. The waves a direct opposition to the ones on the west coast. The opposite ocean facing the opposite way, both sides book-ending the country in nothing but water as far as we can see. Nothing but the waves chipping away at the shore, taking pieces of the land back with it. _

_ If a chunk of the country were to fall off right now, to break off like a crumbling piece of cake at a birthday party, we would be helpless to stop it. _

_ We are nothing against the forces of nature. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew’s last delivery was to a factory. Lumber, or something. He couldn’t really remember. He was about three weeks late on delivery.

The didn’t recognize the name of the company, but the factory itself was a giant, hulking thing. It sat directly on a beach in Delaware, a huge LEGO-shaped rectangle of metal pipes and big glass windows and three massive smokestacks spewing out thick, black clouds over the water. The far side of the factory dipped into the high-tide water, and the waves lapped up against the concrete foundation. Andrew watched them move for a few minutes, wondering who would build a factory directly on a beach like this. He wondered how they could get away with the environmental hazards alone.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Is this the world you left me, Abram? _

_ Leaderless and spinning? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew turned away from the bay and searched for a way onto the loading dock. After circling the front of the factory for a good ten minutes, he finally accepted the fact that the only way to unload this haul was to drive directly onto the sand and up to the back of the factory.

Cursing the design of this stupid place for what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes, Andrew pushed through the sand to back up to the loading docks.

There was a young man there waiting for him. He couldn’t have been any older than 18. Probably less. He was wearing a gray factory jumpsuit with the company’s logo on it in orange. The logo was a dog cringing in pain.

The logo said: “Palmetto Industries.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The factory was located on Slaughter Beach, Delaware. _

_ Slaughter Beach. It’s an interesting name, don’t you think? _

_ Contrary to what you might believe, Slaughter Beach is not actually outright named that due to a mass killing that happened on its shore. In fact, there are multiple theories on how the town got its name -- most likely to cover up the one with the most blood. _

_ It could have been named after a postman named William Slaughter from the early 19th-century. It could have been named due to the fact that every year, thousands of horseshoe crabs come to this beach to lay their eggs and then die on the beach. _

_ Or, it could actually be the third option. The one that talks about a man who lead a bunch of settlers in killing a large amount of Native Americans by cannonfire. _

_ On their tourism home page, the city refers to this as their most “colorful” history of how the town got its name. _

_ That’s one way to describe it, I suppose. _

_ [a pause] _

_ What is this world that you’ve left me? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“Hey,” the kid said, raising a hand in greeting. “Name’s Seth. You got my delivery?”

Andrew nodded. Seth nodded back. He didn’t seem bothered by the fact that it was late.

It wasn’t a large delivery. Andrew honestly had no idea why they had sent a truck his size to do the job. It was just stray bits of wood, each individually labeled with a number and a letter. 

“Cool, cool,” Seth said, nodding when the doors to the trailer were opened. “Perfect. Great. Hey, help me with this, would you?”

Andrew considered saying no, to just getting in his truck and driving away. But then he thought that maybe Seth was alone here, at least on loading dock duty. Plus, he would get to see the inside of the factory. He was curious as to what the hell they made, sitting here on the beach.

So he shrugged, and together he and Seth emptied the truck and put them, piece by piece, on a conveyor belt, which carried them through a chute and into the factory. Seth motioned for Andrew to follow him inside, and they moved in the direction of the back doors. Andrew couldn’t see any workers in the scaffolding or the windows. There was no one taking smoke breaks, no one looking out over the bay that they were only a few feet from. Something uneasy settled into his stomach.

“I gotta sign off on the delivery inside,” Seth said. He disappeared through a propped-open fire exit. Andrew followed immediately after, but when he got inside, Seth was already gone.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Hm. _

_ There’s a man parked on the side of the road. He’s sitting next to a black van, and he’s sitting in a lawn chair with a cooler propped up beside him. _

_ There’s a sign in front of him that says “50¢ clams, $2 crabs.” _

_ Tempting, but no thanks. _

_ [silence] _

_ [the sound of passing cars] _

_ Oh, a Coldstone. That’s... much more tempting, honestly. You almost got me, Delaware. You almost got me. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Inside the factory, the air didn’t feel like air. It felt like an artificial replication, recirculated so many times that it had forgotten what real air smelled like.

Andrew made his way down a long hallway, filled with bare bulbs and open doors to empty offices that held no furniture or plans. Seth was nowhere to be found.

Eventually the end of the hallway crept up on him, and he pushed his way through a large glass door into what looked like a manager’s office. Cheap binders lined IKEA shelves along the far wall, all red and blue and overstuffed with paper. A large wooden desk sat in the middle of the room with a computer that looked almost 10 years too old and still ran Windows XP.

A man in a grey jumpsuit stood behind the desk. On the wall behind him was the logo of the company. It was someone drowning, gasping for air, and it said “Palmetto Industries.”

Andrew cleared his throat.

“Oh,” the man said, looking up from the papers on the desk. “Sorry. Just had to get the paperwork settled.”

It was Seth.

It was Seth, but it wasn’t. This man was older, at least thirty now. His hair had started to grey on the edges, and he had a mustache. He didn’t have wrinkles, exactly, but he had the places in his face where wrinkles should be.

Andrew stared. He stared and he tried to make sense of things, but there was nothing he could do to understand what was happening. So he did the only thing he _ could _ do, and he grabbed the uncapped Bic pen that Seth offered him and signed the forms where he was told to.

“Great,” the man that might be Seth said. “Listen, I hate to be a bother, but could you give me a hand with unpacking in the next room? I mean, no problem if not, it’s just kind of a pain in the ass to do on my own, you know?"

Andrew didn’t know. He nodded anyway.

“Great,” the man who might be Seth said again, and he made his way back through the doors in which Andrew had entered.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I’ve been thinking, lately, of our pizza nights. _

_ You know. When we’d make the dough from scratch, the sauce from scratch, the cheese from… Well. From the store. _

_ I told you I refused to go that far, no matter how much you pretended to want to become a dairy farmer just to make our own fucking cheese. _

_ “First of all,” you said, “we wouldn’t have to go to the store ever again.” _

_ I told you that was stupid. That there were plenty of other things we needed from the store besides dairy products. It was a whole thing, Abram, I know you remember. We debated the schematics for weeks. _

_ You were wrong, of course, per usual. Even in hypotheticals you were an idiot. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Even before Andrew pushed his way through the doors, he had a vague idea what would be on the other side. But he pushed through anyway, making his way onto the factory floor, no Seth to be found. The floor was huge, a great arc of a roof with skylights over the machines, all giant automatic monsters that were running without a human in sight. Just metal hands building metal things with an efficiency that humans could never achieve.

He wandered through the machine aisles, the sounds of them rattling his skull and shaking out his brain.

And then, Seth appeared. He was older, in his 50s or 60s, the spaces where wrinkles should be now filled in. Andrew felt vaguely sick, and a bit dizzy, like the machines were pulling him apart and putting him back together all wrong.

“Great,” the man that was definitely Seth said. “You made it.”

He was already in the process of putting the wood pieces together, fitting them into some sort of structure. Andrew couldn’t tell what it was by looking at it.

“Seth,” Andrew said. “What is going on?”

“Seth,” the man who was definitely Seth repeated back, scoffing. “No one’s called me that in years. Call me Brian. Leave the nicknames to the younger man.”

There was a howling from the machines - or was it in Andrew’s head? - and it echoed across the factory floor and fell onto Brian, older and hunched while putting together whatever it was this thing was. He gestured to Andrew every once and a while for a tool he needed, or asked him to hold a piece of wood in place, but other than that, he was silent. 

Once he was finished it didn’t look like much; a cube, maybe, but missing a few vital pieces that made it the object it was supposed to be. Brian pressed a button on a machine and the whole thing rolled on the conveyor belt through the tunnel of machines and out of the factory. Brian turned to Andrew, and gave him a thin smile.

“Well,” he said. “One more stop, now. Come on.”

He made his way out of the building.

Andrew followed.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I liked making the bread. The dough for the crust. _

_ It’s flour and water in your hands, first separate and then merging into a whole. The yeast and gluten making it a living thing that practically moves when you shift it. _

_ It breathes into your hands. Our hands would end up covered in flour, and those flour-covered hands would find their way onto each other, leaving palm-marks behind that you would laugh at as you cleaned afterward. _

_ And afterward we would open a bottle of wine, and we would eat the pizza we made, and we would watch whatever’s on TV and fall asleep in a wine and bread coma. _

_ [a pause] _

_ I think love is cooking together. _

_ I think, more specifically, it’s making something with each other. That’s what I think, Abram. _

_ I don’t know what you think. _

_ Turns out that I didn’t know what you were thinking at all. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Outside the door, Andrew followed a narrow concrete ledge that jutted out over the water.

Blue water, white sand.

Brian was there, already so much older. His hair was white, his eyes were clouded. He must have been 70, now. Maybe 80. Maybe more.

“Well,” he said, tilting his head so Andrew could hear him over the waves. “This is it, then. Help me with the last few pieces.”

And so Andrew did.

And as they locked into place, Andrew understood. And when Brian gestured, Andrew didn’t ask any questions.

Andrew helped carry the coffin they had built to the edge of the factory, and helped drop it into the water.

And when Brian reached for his hand, Andrew didn’t hesitate. He eased him into the coffin, and it floated. Brian nodded.

He didn’t seem scared.

Andrew’s hands shook.

“Just push me out, then,” Brian said, and he laid his head back in the coffin and put his eyes up to the sky.

On the inside of the coffin was the company’s logo in orange. 

The logo was two people lowering a coffin into the sea.

It said: “Palmetto Industries.”

Andrew pushed.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Once he was gone, and once I could breathe again, I stepped off the edge. _

_ Waist-deep in the water, I walked through the ocean and around the factory, and onto the sand, and got into my truck, wet as I was, dripping onto the seat, soaking the books stacked on the floor, curling the pages, and put my hand on the key, turned the engine back on, and drove away. _

_ Away across the sand, away from the factory, away from the bay. _

_ And that’s where I am now. Driving, as I always am when we talk. _

_ [a pause] _

_ [a scoff] _

_ “We.” _

_ Of course “we” don’t talk. _

_ I do. _

_ You? You vanish. _

_ You are a-- you’re a gap, a nothing. And I talk into that nothing, letting my words float away, like Seth on the waves, like… like Brian on the waves. _

_ I let my words vanish, and I just keep driving. _

_ [a pause] _

_ Flour on our hands, sauce on our hands, our hands on our hands. Something forgettable on the television. Leg upon leg. _

_ That was a life, Abram; that’s what a life is made of. _

_ Hand upon hand upon leg upon heart upon couch upon a day where we made bread together. _

_ And now, a coffin floating away on water as blue as anything under a sky, as blue as the eyes I’d wake up to every morning, as blue as anything away from the factory. Away from the factory on the bay. _

_ [silence] _

_ [the sound of cars passing on a highway] _

_ [a sigh] _

_ Fuck it. There’s a Denny’s two miles anyway. _

_ There’s that, Abram. There’s always that. _

_ [radio clicks off] _


	8. The Other Town

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ California is something else. _

_ The Inland Empire especially. Traffic is absolutely ridiculous.  _

_ Anyway, I eventually made it to the town that was circled on Officer Campbell’s list: Victorville, California. What is hidden here? Or what is hiding? _

_ I suppose I’m about to find out. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter VIII: The Other Town**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [a sigh] _

_ I’m in line at a weigh station. My butt has gone completely numb, and my lower back is killing me. God, this fucking sucks. _

_ Scientists can’t seem to agree on how fatal sitting down for long periods is. Well, except in the general sense that everything, eventually, is fatal. _

_ So I’ll just sit here, uncomfortable, slowly dying like the rest of the world, guilty about what happened in Victorville. About what I have to do next. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew bought a used car outside of town for practically nothing.

“This probably won’t last the year,” the man that sold it said as Andrew took the keys. “It barely runs.”

“Who’s thinking that far ahead?” Andrew said back, and he drove off.

He wasn’t sure where to start, really. So he started small.

He spent the first few days going to local businesses; pizza shops, KMarts, skate shops, and anywhere else he could make idle conversation, gently nudging topics to anything strange that people might have noticed, or maybe forced themselves  _ not _ to notice.

Everything was stupidly normal.

Until it was not.

He was in a Burger King, talking to the man behind the counter about comics and movie adaptations, when he mentioned something about “The Other Town.”

“What other town?” Andrew asked.

The man’s head shot upward.

“Huh?” He asked, in a bad attempt to feign casualty. “No, what? Nothing, no, no. No other town. Or- like, uh, Apple Valley, maybe? It’s right over there. Like... The other town, you know?”

The man wouldn’t let Andrew ask any more questions, turning around quickly and muttering about getting back to work.

So Andrew circled back to places he had already been. He started slipping the phrase “the other town” into conversations. Never as a direct question, just settled into the sentences that he’d form to watch the person’s reactions.

The person at the pizza shop winced.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” they said. “They leave us alone. You leave them alone.”

But it was too late. Andrew’s interest was piqued.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ You know, Abram, for all of the traveling you did, we only took one road trip together. _

_ It was that summer where it was hard for me to function. One of those summers that were more bad days than good. Nightmares. Memories. Ghosts that haunted me long after my demons were laid to rest. Sometimes it felt like I couldn’t breathe the air everyone else was breathing; that oxygen had stopped working only for me. _

_ You found me sitting on the shower floor, fully dressed, unmoving for 20 minutes while the water washed over me. _

_ You said, “First off, there’s a drought. Second, let’s go on a trip.” _

_ I didn’t want to. _

_ You said, “I always travel, but I never get to travel with you. Let’s just drive somewhere. Throw some clothes in a bag. Throw the bag in the car. All you have to do is sit.” _

_ I thought about it. I let you turn the water off. I said, “Okay.” _

_ It should be easy to remember what year this happened, but it isn’t. It was the one with the drought, I guess.  _

_ There are a lot of droughts, though. Not like this one, obviously. This one is set to empty us. This one’s the end. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The woman at the KMart got angry.

“Don’t even say anything about that in here,” she hissed, leaning close enough that Andrew could practically feel her breath on his face. “Don’t you dare say those words in my store. You will bring him  _ here _ .”

“Who?” Andrew asked.

“Get. Out.”

She practically shoved him out onto the street.

\--

The guy at the party store shuddered.

“Fuck, dude,” he said. “You can’t just talk about The Other Town.”

“Why not?” Andrew asked. He was asking a lot of questions that weren’t getting answered. He was a bit tired of it.

“Because when you talk about The Other Town, there’s a tendency for him to- oh.” He cut himself off, his face growing pale and his eyes growing wide. “Oh,  _ fuck _ .”

“What?” Andrew said.

“You need to hide,” the guy said, shoving at Andrew’s arm. “You need to hide right now.”

At the place Andrew was in his life, when he was told to hide, he would. So he crouched behind a large bin of inflatable balls just in time to hear the door chime ring.

“Hey, Mike.”

The voice was low, raspy, like an echo in a cave that didn’t quite reach your ears. Like the sound of a wooden flute hollowing through the wind.

“Oh!” Mike said, and he forced out an awkward laugh. “Hey man! So... uh.”

“No need to be worried, son,” the voice said. “I just heard that someone might be asking about The Other Town.”

“Oh?” said Mike.

“Yeah,” said the voice. “You seen anyone like that?”

“Uh.” Mike cleared his throat. “Not, uh. Not that I can remember.”

The voice hummed. It was a broken, crackling thing.

“Son, don’t you think you’d remember if someone mentioned The Other Town?”

Andrew shifted slightly on the balls of his feet to peer around the edge of the bin. The man speaking was leaning across the counter slightly, his clothes filthy, his hat askew. It read BUTCHER in all capital letters. Blood red on black background.

There were more of him.

“Oh,” Mike said. “Oh. Uh, yeah. You’re right. I would have remembered. Uh. No, no, no one asked.”

The other Butcher stared at Mike for a very long time. Andrew wondered if he would lean forward a little more, and wondered if he would take a bite out of Mike. He wondered if he would watch the life leave his eyes, the way he had watched Earl in the parking lot of a rest stop all those months ago.

Instead, the other Butcher turned around without speaking, and walked out of the store.

Andrew left immediately after, and followed the other Butcher across the parking lot.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ You loved driving. It calmed you. The long miles, the endless hours. It was normal to you. _

_ “We would drive for days, me and my mom,” you said one night as we passed by an abandoned Hardee’s. “Sometimes the only time we would stop would be to use the restroom at some gas station somewhere. We wouldn’t sleep. We would just switch off behind the wheel, and the other would sleep in the back.” _

_ I kept my opinion on your mother to myself. We both knew how I felt, anyway. _

_ I wanted to stop every few hours or so. Every minute seemed to stretch on, miles and miles, and the scenery was all repetitive and blank. _

_ You were happy, though. Because what had happened that I hadn’t noticed is that I was bored. And bored was a big step up from dysfunctionally empty. _

_ But the second night, we stayed at this hotel. _

_ “You may be comfortable sleeping in a car,” I said, “but I’m sure as hell not. Pull over. We’re getting a room.” _

_ We pulled over. We got a room. _

_ Once we were settled in for the night I flipped through the television. I was marginally pleased to discover that one of the four channels on the TV was Discovery ID. I was watching one of those terrible reenactments of some crime or another when you got a call. _

_ It was short. You tried to act casual. It was a lot of “Sure, sure, okay, uh huh”s. And then you hung up. _

_ It wasn’t even two minutes later that you mentioned going to the store to grab us something for dinner. You tried to act like it wasn’t connected to the call. _

_ “I’ll probably get one of those rotisserie chickens,” you said. “You like the lemon garlic ones, right? I’ll get you some ice cream too. Do you want to come?” _

_ We both knew that I would say no. _

_ So you left. _

_ And you were gone for a long, long time. More than two hours. _

_ I was afraid. I do not like to admit it, but I was. I was afraid, staring at the curtained window of the motel room, helpless to do anything but wait, and wait, and wait for you to come back. _

_ And I was afraid, Abram, that you wouldn’t. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Outside of the party store, the other Butcher climbed into a car. It was a silver Toyota. It was a few years old, and relatively clean. He pulled out of the parking lot, and Andrew climbed into his own car and followed.

They traveled for what felt like hours, driving through housing and desert and then nothing for a long time. Finally, though, finally, they reached what looked like a military airport. It was surrounded by barbed wire and hangers, and they drove along the fence for a while. Andrew kept a safe distance, headlights off, only going as fast as he needed to keep the other car within his sights.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ And then you did. _

_ You came back. _

_ “The supermarket was closed,” you said. “I looked all over,” you said. “But only the gas station was open, so I brought us gas station snacks and cigarettes.” _

_ I hid my anxiety from you. I didn’t want you to know how much you being gone had destabilized me. I think you noticed, though. _

_ We sat on the balcony of the hotel room and smoked our cigarettes. The sun set over the parking lot and the self-storage center next door. We ate our gas station food. _

_ That’s one of my favorite memories of you, actually. Us, with almost nothing. And still, we had everything. _

_ You were gone a long time though, Abram. Way longer than what made sense.  _

_ I guess we both knew that.  _

_ I guess we both just worked around what both of us knew. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The other Butcher drove through a hole in the fence that led into the airport. The hole looked like it was accidental, but it was just wide enough for a car.

Andrew counted to ten, and then he followed.

If the other Butcher noticed him, he noticed him.

He would do what had to be done.

By the time Andrew made it through, there was no sign of the other Butcher or his car. A shape loomed in front of him in the dark; a passenger jet. Grounded, silent, earthbound. A dead giant.

There were more of them the further in he drove. Line after line of dead jetliners, left to rot away to nothing. As Andrew drove through them, he couldn’t see the other Butcher’s car anywhere. At this point, his engine was loud enough against the silence surrounding him that he very well could have been the one being hunted. 

He drove even further in. Still, nothing.

And then, something.

Lights appeared so quickly in front of him that he needed to slam on his brakes. He turned off the car quickly, crouching low and hurrying his way across the dirt, ducking behind the wheel of one of the jets in time to witness the other Butcher’s car being pulled through a gate in a high wall, a jet behind him. The wall was featureless, except a small sign by the gate.

The sign said “BUTCHER.”

Feeling dizzy, Andrew circled around the jet to find a point where the hillside rose above the edge of the wall. He climbed it as quickly as possible, grateful for his boots, until he reached a high enough point to see over into the compound.

He had found The Other Town.

Inside of this military base, past rows and rows of jetliner graves, he had found it.

Houses, a market, a gas station, anything they might need. Even at this hour, the streets were busy.

And on the streets, loose-skinned with odd movements, silent and staring and occasionally laughing at no one and nothing, were Butchers.

Hundreds and hundreds of Butchers.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ It was an entire city of them, Abram. These creatures, so dangerous that a single one of them almost destroyed me. And now there are hundreds of these, what, serial killers? Living together buried in this airplane boneyard? On an airbase. Hidden on a U.S. military airbase. _

_ [a pause] _

_ This is beyond me.  _

_ I’m sorry.  _

_ I’m sorry I failed you, Abram. Though I’m sorry even more that I failed Robin. _

_ I’m going to take the advice you tried to give me, forever ago on that billboard. The advice that you must have given me knowing what I have just learned. _

_ So I’m breaking my promise, Abram. I’m giving up. I’m going home. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [end credits roll]
> 
> just kidding lmao could you imagine
> 
> ANYWAY yall didn't think i wouldn't update today did u? I'm not very happy with this chapter, but I wanted to stop looking at it so here. Take it before I burn it.
> 
> I work for a school district, and school started back up today, so that means work started up too. Meh. So I'll probably be bumped down to one chapter a day (hopefully) and updates later in the evenings.
> 
> Hope that's okay.
> 
> Thank you all for reading!! I'm so glad that so many of you are enjoying this.


	9. Home Again

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Crossing the bay into Richmond. The water sparkles like it does in poems. It’s overrated, but I guess it’ll be the last beauty I see for a while. _

_ Or maybe just the last one that I see at all. _

_ Haven’t I had enough of that for one life, anyway? Enough of everything, in general? _

_ I don’t know, Abram. I don’t know. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter IX: Home Again.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Once you get out of Richmond and onto the highway, it’s a long stretch of nothing. Well, there are windmills, but that’s about it. Other than billboards, but I’m sure you can understand my newfound annoyance with those. _

_ There were three billboards that passed by me in quick succession. There was a part of a face on each one; face fragments, gray and strange, and as you drove past them, the three fragments blurred together and seemed to move. Kind of... came together. Like some kind of attempt at billboard animation. When they all came together the final image was a smiling, grey, sunken face. Just... smiling. _

_ Or, no. Not that. _

_ What’s like a smile, but tired? _

_ What’s like a face, but distant? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

It had been almost a year since Andrew had been home.

It was weird, coming back after being gone for so long. The apartment was the same as he left it, everything in its proper place and untouched. There was a fine layer of dust on almost everything he owned. He was unsettled at the silence around him.

Everything just seemed so trivial now. Nothing truly seemed to be his, after living for the past 6 months out of a truck cab with barely enough clothes to last him the week. Cooking seemed like a chore after eating nothing but shitty diner food and gas station snacks. The one-bedroom apartment felt too big. His bed felt like it stretched on for miles.

Bee came by his fifth day home. She had been giving him his space, he knew, but eventually, she made her way over.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked over hot chocolate and waffles, her feet swinging off of the barstool at Andrew’s kitchen counter. Andrew was across from her, eating while standing up.

“No,” he said, and Bee nodded. That was the end of the conversation.

Renee called him two days later and asked if he wanted to meet for lunch. He accepted.

Nicky texted later that day and asked if he wanted to Skype. He said yes.

Aaron sent him a photograph of his niece with the message “are you done being a lone wolf or are you still finding urself off in the big wide world.” Andrew sent him a middle finger emoji.

He did his best to fall back into a routine. He woke up, found things to do that occupied the day, went to sleep again. Wake, live, sleep, repeat.

It felt like play-acting; playing the role of himself, and not even doing a good job of it.

There was also a fear in him.

He refused to admit it, but he was afraid. He felt watched, threatened, like there were eyes on him that he could not see. But no matter how many times he turned around, there was no one watching him. No matter how many times he threw himself awake, gasping and swinging and scrambling for the lights, there was no one there.

There was no proof, but he did not feel safe. He did not feel like he had escaped.

And then, one night, three weeks after he had returned home, he heard a sound.

It was a low, guttural thing, like the sound of a draining pipe, or the sound of a human choking out their last breath. It was low, and it was hoarse, and it was coming from his kitchen in the middle of the night.

A white-hot fear tore through Andrew, settling into the base of his spine and sizzling at the bottom of his stomach. He shook, violently, but he climbed out of his bed and crept through the apartment toward the noise.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Oklahoma. _

_ Seriously, what even is there in Oklahoma? Have you ever heard, in your entire life, a single person willingly say that they _ want _ to move to Oklahoma? _

_ Like... What are they even known for? _

_ I mean, wasn’t there a play about it or something? That’s about all I can think about. _

_ [scoffs] _

_ Oklahoma. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew made it to the end of the hall that faced out into the living room. There, in the darkness of the TV, he could see the shape of something that he could not immediately make out as anything specific.

It was a bent shape, large and hunched and much too crooked, and it was moving in a loose and unnatural way.

He smelled motor oil. He smelled burnt toast. He smelled fear and cleaning chemicals and fast food restaurant bathrooms.

The shape made the noise again. Long, hollow, the sound of a tar pit bubbling over.

Andrew leaned around the corner of the hallway, just enough to see.

It was a Butcher.

It was not the one that had followed Andrew, or the one that he had followed himself, but another one entirely, bent horribly backwards, like his spine had snapped in half, his expression pointed toward the ceiling with a too-straight smile stretched across his face. One of his eyes was sunken and warped. One of his cheeks was hollowed out.

He gurgled.

Andrew turned and ran. He sprinted to his bedroom, uncaring if the Butcher followed, and locked the door as if it would stop him. He stood on the other side of the room, his knives pulled, waiting for the door to break down, but nothing else happened.

Morning came, and the Butcher was gone.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I stopped for lunch at a Subway because they had parking for my truck. It’s the easiest way to decide what to eat, I guess. Two simple questions: can they take my truck, and will it not be that much of a pain in the ass to drive out again? _

_ Someday there will be self-driving trucks, and no one will need to be in this cab at all. This won’t be anyone’s job. It won’t be a job. All of us will have to figure out how to define ourselves when we’re not defining ourselves by how we survive. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Even then, Andrew tried to continue with his routine. What else could he have done, really?

After spending years counting the minutes between breathing and death, he had learned how to live on, even when everything was falling apart around him.

He bought groceries. He made dinner. He searched for jobs.

That last bit was hard, considering the gap on his resume. Five years in office jobs only to take a year-long sabbatical to drive a truck.

“Was this, uh, some attempt at finding yourself?” one woman half-joked as she looked over the application he’d submitted. Andrew stared back at her, expression blank.

“It was about finding someone,” he said. “Sure.”

But even as his routine continued, so did the watchings and the warnings.

One night he looked out his window to see another Butcher on his neighbor’s balcony. He was smiling, his neck bent at a broken angle, half of his face hanging slack. The smile stayed put, though, and the rest of the skin of his cheeks simply hung around it. Andrew closed his curtains.

He had no idea what had happened to his neighbor. Was he even alive? Was he dead, throat torn out and eyes shuttered shut, his last breath taken with no one around?

Even if he was dead, what was Andrew supposed to do? He couldn’t call the police; there was no one in this world that would help him.

He would wake up to footsteps in his house, off-beat and dragging. Like a wounded animal, in the hours when night and morning meet.

There would be a car on his block that he had never seen before, but was now always parked with a perfect view of his house.

He was in his shower one night, at a moment where he dared to try. Any sort of vulnerability became a calculated risk; was it safe to sleep now? Could he shower for these few minutes?

This night, he had miscalculated that moment.

He could feel something behind him, watching him, breathing down his neck. He could hear it; could hear the crackled hiss of an inhale and the low wheeze of the exhale. But every time he turned, there was nothing there.

But there was.

He knew it. He could feel it, and with that feeling came the ghosts of his past, came heavy hands and whispers that had long been buried into corners of his mind that he dared to never enter. He could feel the presence behind him, and he wasn’t sure whether it was the monsters of the past or the present.

He could smell grass and fertilizer. Could hear the inhale, and then exhale. The water was too hot, and then too cold, like someone was moving the gage.

He turned the shower off. The bathroom fell silent. He tore open the shower curtain, and the bathroom was empty. There was no one. There was nothing.

He turned the shower back on.

The presence was at his back, now, and the smell was even stronger. The breath on the back of his neck was hot against the cold of the water. He could _ feel _ the inhale. Could _ feel _ the exhale, too.

He turned the shower off again.

He left the bathroom, and locked himself in his room for the rest of the night.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Arizona again. _

_ God I hate this place. _

_ I took a very long way around Millport. Avoided that place like the fucking plague. The last thing I need right now is to get stuck there again. _

_ It’s hot here. It’s always hot here. _

_ I really hate Arizona. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

His anxiety was becoming a monster of its own. It was nearly overwhelming. He could feel himself shutting down, could feel himself wanting to do nothing at all, to not get out of bed, to simply wait for them to come and take him away.

But what were they even trying to warm him away from? He had gone home. He had given up.

He thought about it for a long time before he realized something.

They didn’t care.

They were toying with him. That was all it was; a cat playing with a mouse, waiting until they were bored enough with the chase before eating it.

And thinking about it some more, he decided on a course of action.

Because staying at home and waiting to die was not an option that he was willing to take.

He would have to plan carefully. He called Fox Shipping, told them that he was coming back. It would take him a while, he knew, to come up with a solid plan. He would have to wait, and watch, and circle back to California as many times as he could before he came up with something detailed enough to work. He would wait, though. He would wait.

But then he received a letter.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The one thing that Bee and I always disagreed on was our cleaning methods. _

_ The only time I ever saw Bee marginally upset with anyone was usually on days where I was supposed to do the cleaning. That marginal anger was usually directed at me. _

_ The difference, you know, was the fact that I cleaned my room and the bathroom and the kitchen like a normal person: bleach the counters and wipe them down, vacuum the floor, put the dishes in the dishwasher. _

_ Bee, meanwhile, bleached the countertops three times and scrubbed at them until they shined. Her idea of vacuuming took at least 45 minutes to do the living room alone. She would take all of the dishes out of the dishwasher and rearrange them the way she liked better. _

_ She wanted the sinks so clean you could eat soup out of them. I just wanted things clean enough to not be dirty. _

_ Anyway, this is why we got along so well. You agreed with my cleaning methods. You were the same way. We would switch off cleaning days, but we would never complain about the other’s work. It was nice. I didn’t have to scrub tile grout with a toothbrush anymore. _

_ [a pause] _

_ I am sad, though, that I won’t ever be able to bug Bee with my cleaning habits again after today. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

It was less of a letter and more of a note.

It was left tacked to his front door, written on thick yellow paper that looked like it had been dipped in motor oil and left out to dry. On the paper was an address, written with what looked like a pen with hardly any ink, so that it was more scratched into the paper than written. It took Andrew a moment to register what he was reading. And then he was on the road heading west.

He called Robin. She picked up immediately, and he told her she needed to start running again. That they had found her. She didn’t ask questions. She simply did.

There would be no planning. There would be no waiting.

He was going to drive his truck at the gates of The Other Town, and after that?

He didn’t really know.

It was late afternoon by the time he reached the military base. His truck sat idle on the hill in front of the gates. His window was rolled down, and he took a breath as he finished his cigarette. He assumed this would be his last one.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [silence] _

_ I wish I could have seen you again. _

_ I guess that’s what this always was. _

_ I just… I wish that I could have seen you again. _

_ Just that. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

He flicked his cigarette out of the open window. This was it, then. It was now or never.

If he died here, then he died here. At least he would go down fighting.

He was tired of running. He was so, so tired.

Though this hadn’t really been running from something, had it? Not at first. It had been running _ to _ something, even if that something didn’t want to be found.

Even if that-

Something opened the door to the truck.

Andrew sat up in the seat, hands reaching for his knives, body twisting backward in order to defend-

Blue eyes met hazel in the late afternoon light.

Andrew froze.

He stared at the person across from him, stared at the person that had the audacity to smile, his grin crooked, his eyes a special sort of sad. He stared at the person that he had been searching for, who he had mourned as if dead, who was his home, who was his light, who was his-

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Abram? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god i've been waiting for this chapter since day one


	10. Butcher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes on this chapter:
> 
> First, it's entirely from Andrew's podcast POV. I thought about it a lot, and this chapter just made a lot more sense to me to be written this way. I hope you don't mind, and I hope you understand why.
> 
> Second, all direct quotes pulled belong to Joseph Fink.
> 
> I hope you enjoy

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Near the Nevada border I pulled the truck to the side of the road. I turned off the engine but I left the AC on, because it is so hot here. Opening the window feels like opening an oven. When you pull open the door and the heat slaps you in the face. Like that. You know. _

_ I can’t stop staring at my hands. They’re just my hands. Nothing about them is different, but at the same time, everything about them is. They’re different because now my hands remember the feeling of your hands, warm and shaking as they held my own. _

_ How could they be ordinary hands and also hold that memory at the same time? How could they have forgotten that feeling at all? _

_ I can’t drive while I tell this. It’s too much to say. But I’m going to tell it all, Abram. Even the parts you already know.  _

_ I’m going to describe the shape of the monster that is devouring me. _

_ And then I’m going to start this engine, and leave that monster behind. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part I.**

**Chapter X: Butcher.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ “Abram?” _

_ I don’t know why I phrased it as a question. Why I asked it a second time, after the initial shock of seeing you standing in the doorway of my cab. But it was you. And the surprise of that seemed to justify the question. _

_ You smiled. It was your stupid, bullshit, crooked smile. The one that you would give me when you knew that you were in trouble, or you were going to say something incredibly dumb, and you knew that you would have to smooth things over somehow. Your eyes, though, were sad. _

_ You looked like you always had, except a little older, like I looked a little older, incrementally, the way we never notice until we do. Your hair was longer. Your skin was darker. More freckles ran along the ridge of your nose. _

_ “It’s me, Andrew,” you said. _

_ “Ah,” I said. “No nicknames, then.” _

_ “I could call you ‘Drew, if you want,” you said. _

_ “Do it and I’ll push you out of the car,” I said. _

_ You took my hand. You did not ask, you simply took. After six years, we have grown accustomed to one another. We’ve grown comfortable past the point of asking, most days, if a touch is acceptable. To ask whether or not it was a good day. I’d grown into your space, and you’d grown into mine. _

_ But it had been a long time since you had been in my space, hadn’t it? Like you had been ripped out at the roots, the vines of your love leaving empty hollow spaces where it once was. _

_ My instinct was to grab you the way that I always did, to place my hand on the back of your neck, to pull you close and breathe you in. _

_ But it had been a long time, and both of us just let it linger at our hands. _

_ Today was not a good day. _

_ “I’m sorry, Kroshka,” you said. _

_ Hmm. _

_ “Andrew is fine for now,” I said. _

_ You had the decency to look scorned, at least. You had the decency to look like you almost regret it. _

_ “I’m sorry,” you said. “This wasn’t about you. That’s not why I left. It wasn’t you, Andrew, it-” _

_ “Was a higher calling?” I asked. I didn’t stop the acid from melting my words. _

_ “A lower one, I guess,” you said. Something in your eyes grew dark. “The lowest, darkest places. You know. You’ve seen them.” _

_ I stared at you for a long moment. You stared back. You were still holding my hand, and my skin was buzzing, like fire ants attempting to claw their way out from under it. _

_ Finally, I asked, “You left to try to fix whatever this all is?” _

_ You nodded.  _

_ “I left to help fix it. Andrew, the world is teetering. I’m trying to keep it sliding the right direction. Either way, a huge and terrible change is coming. But if it slides too far toward them-” you gestured with your eyes at the Butcher gates “-then it’s all over for people like us. People who feel.” _

_ “I don’t feel anything,” I said, and you gave me another sad smile. _

_ “You feel,” you said. “You feel. Otherwise you would not be here.” _

_ “Speaking of which,” I said, “I am about to crash this truck into that town.” _

_ I pointed at said town. _

_ “They’ll kill you,” you said. _

_ “Maybe,” I said. _

_ You ran a hand through your hair the way you do when you’re frustrated. When you pulled it back, your hair was sticking out in horribly awkward angles. I wanted to reach out and fix it, but I did not.  _

_ “Andrew,” you said, “they will kill you to an extent you didn’t know a person could be killed. We both know what they can do. We both know. You  _ know _ .”  _

_ You took a breath and ran a hand through your hair again.  _

_ “I guess I don’t have the moral standing to tell you not to do this,” you said, “but really Andrew, don’t do this. You don’t know how dangerous they can be.” _

_ “Oh, Abram,” I said. “I know.” _

_ “Fine,” you said. “Fine.” _

_ You bit at your lip for a second, as if you were trying to decide whether or not to do something. And then you pulled me toward you. You were the one who did that. You buried your face in my neck, and breathed in. _

_ “Andrew,” you said, “I love you. I am your husband, and you are my husband, and I want to be with you forever. But-” _

_ You pulled yourself back up. The hollow of my neck felt empty, as if your lips were made to rest there. _

_ “-forever can’t start yet. And in the meantime, you can’t keep looking for me.” _

_ “I can’t go home, either,” I said. “I tried that.” _

_ “I know,” you said. “I know, and I don’t know what to do about that, and I’m sorry. But I need to be out where I am, doing what I am doing. I need to stay lost for a while. I need you to understand. I need you to trust that I will come back.” _

_ My heart beat differently just being near you. Just touching. Just briefly. _

_ “Take me with you,” I said. _

_ Even as I said it, I knew that it was impossible. So I didn’t even feel disappointed when you shook your head. _

_ “I’m sorry,” you repeated. You repeated. You repeated. _

_ “I understand,” I said. “I understand why you left. But what you did? Disappearing? Leaving me, again, without even explaining. To let me think that you were dead for the second time in our lives. It is inexcusable.” _

_ We were quiet again, as we stared at each other across the cab. _

_ “You tell me to trust you to come back,” I said. “As if you haven’t broken that trust into pieces so small that it is nearly unrecognizable.” _

_ I saw your intake of breath. I saw the clench of your jaw. Felt the strain of your grip. I know that you understand the weight of a promise, Abram. I know that you understand the weight that a broken one carries. _

_ “Someday I will come back, if you let me,” you said. Your voice was glass, fragile enough to break on contact. But it was also steel, refusing to bend in any way other than your own. “I will come back, and we will live out the rest of our lives together. I promise that. I promise that. But in the meantime-” _

_ “In the meantime?” I said, “stop looking.” _

_ “Yeah,” you said. It came out as nearly a whisper. “Yes. I’m sorry.” _

_ You repeated. You repeated. You repeated. _

_ We didn’t say anything for a while. And then we kissed. _

_ I do not know who reached for who. Only that one moment we were staring at each one another over the expense of the cab, and then the next moment we were grasping at each other, unable to let go, mouths meeting in a single point of contact. I set aside my anger and my sadness and my hurt, and I fell into you fully, let myself remember what it was like to love you completely. _

_ We could have spent forever like that, could have let the rest of the world burn, and I would have been satisfied. But then it was over. _

_ “Soon,” you said as you pulled away. Your smile was heartbreakingly sad. “Soon. And I guess I can only say again, Andrew, just... don’t do this.” _

_ I let go of your hands. I sat back in my chair. I turned to face the Butcher gates. _

_ “I am driving through those gates as soon as you step out of this truck.” _

_ You closed your eyes, and took a breath. And then you opened them again. _

_ “I love you, Andrew,” you said. “I love you. I love you.” _

_ “I love you, Abram.” _

_ And then you were gone. My hands were shaking. The memory of your presence was so fresh that if I looked at the space you had been, I swore I could still see you there. _

_ I looked at the gate with its sign that said Butcher. Around me was the vibration of the engine and the weight of the truck, all mass and potential energy. _

_ I touched my foot to the gas, not pushing down yet. I took a breath. I resisted lighting another cigarette. _

_ I reached into my bag, did the one bit of preparation I had had time to think about. I let myself breathe a few more times. Felt the air go in and out, enjoying those moments in which that was still possible. _

_ My whole body was damp now. I thought of what I would do once I crashed through the gate, but my mind was a blank. Like the calm before a storm. I had no plan at all. _

_ I hit the gas. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ There was a screech like nails on a chalkboard as the gate tore off under the weight of my truck as it barrelled into the town. _

_ There were so many of those men with their ill-fitting skin and Butcher hats. Hundreds, maybe. More than that.  _

_ I plowed through them and they went flying, landing at horrible angles or getting caught up under the wheels of my truck before I had to brake to avoid crashing into the gas station. The explosion might have taken out a lot of them, but I needed to be alive to see this through, to make sure that none of this was left when I went. _

_ The mob surrounded the cab as soon as I stopped. One of the ones who had been hit limped toward me. The skin of his face had been torn off by the collision and underneath was just yellow fat. It dripped down over his chin. There was no sign of bone. _

_ I considered my next move. My whole body glistened, and my hands slid off the steering wheel. I had to grip tightly in order to keep hold of it. _

_ A whole glob of the yellow fat fell from the injured man’s face and landed on the ground, where he slipped on it. He laughed. It was a choked, broken sound. _

_ All of the buildings in the town were covered with a thin layer of oil. It shone in the late afternoon light. _

_ There was a Butcher tied to a streetlight near the gas station. He leaned into the ropes. _

_ “Get him,” he said. His voice was the grating of sandpaper on wood. His whole body was covered in knife wounds, but his eyes were alive and focused. “Get him.” _

_ He bled mildew and must into the ropes. _

_ The crowd parted, and him – the original Him – the Butcher, the Hungry Man, walked up to the door of my cab. He smiled, his teeth perfectly white against the sickly yellow of his skin. He looked like your father. _

_ “Oh, you can get out,” he said. He shrugged, and his shoulder shifted. It would have fallen off if there was no shirt to keep it together. “None of us are going to hurt you right away. And you aren’t any safer in there.” _

_ He was right. I opened the door. It took a couple tries, though, because my hands were so slippery, but I opened it eventually. _

_ “Look at you,” he said, “sweating like a lost child exhausted from running around searching for his mother.” _

_ “That’s a weird metaphor,” I said. _

_ “You’re nervous,” he said. _

_ “I couldn't care less,” I said. _

_ “Welcome to my home,” he said. “We didn’t know you were coming, or we would have prepared better.” _

_ I hummed. “I’m sure you would have.” _

_ The Butcher shrugged again. “We could have at least skipped lunch.” _

_ “What is this place?” I asked, ignoring his comment and the way it made my stomach turn. “Not that it matters. Not that it’s anything but a wound that needs to be sewn shut. But you know, the longer I keep talking, the longer I have until you attack me.” _

_ “That’s a complicated story,” he said. “I’m not much for talking. Not like you, though, with your ‘Oh, Abram! Hi, Abram! It’s me, Abram!’” _

_ His voice was like an echo of a cave. _

_ The other Butchers had backed up to form a circle around us, leaving the two of us alone in the center, like the main event of a fight. I was his to handle. _

_ “You’re serial killers,” I said. _

_ “We’re freedom,” he said. “Freedom can be good or bad. You know this. You know this. You know that there can be terrible freedom.” He grinned. His teeth were faintly green. He motioned to himself and the town around him.  _

_ “And we are the terrible freedom.” _

_ “You’re murderers,” I said. _

_ “America,” he said, “is a country defined as much by distance as it is culture. America embraces its distances. It’s empty spaces and road trips, but there is always a price to pay. We are that price. We are the creatures of the road. We feed on the distance, on road trips, on emptiness. We feed on bodies by the side of the highway.” _

_ “Don’t try to make poetry out of the blood on your hands,” I said. _

_ “As if you do not have blood on yours?” _

_ “Do not mistake protection for senselessness,” I said. _

_ There was a pause, long and heavy, and then he took my arm.  _

_ It was not a question. It was a demand. It was a taking, as if my arm was a lifeline, and he was a drowning man at sea.  _

_ He took my arm, and he shoved me against the trailer.  _

_ His own arm was against my throat. _

_ Fear shot its way through my heart, and I was taken back to a mirror image of us in a WalMart parking lot somewhere in Nebraska. I grit my teeth against the fear, and I looked up at him in challenge. _

_ It took a moment for him to realize that he was in pain. _

_ Once he realized, though, he backed away, his face twisting in confusion and disgust. He looked me over, clearly angry. _

_ I gestured to my drenched face, neck, torso. _

_ “Heather oil,” I said. “Poured a few bottles right over my head. Tip from a friend.” _

_ The Butcher growled, and it sounded like a creature ten times his size. No human throat made that sound. _

_ “You think that will protect you?” he said. He reached out quicker than I could see, and he slapped me. The world went white on one side, and my left ear rang. “It will hurt me, but it will hurt you more. I will make it hurt you more.” _

_ I didn’t respond with words. Instead I grabbed his face, wrenching open his mouth, reaching past his too-straight teeth, and I shoved in a huge fistful of dried heather down his throat. _

_ “I also brought this,” I said. _

_ He choked. His skin turned purple, as though his entire body was bruising, and then he turned and ran. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The other Butchers froze. They had no idea what they should do. _

_ I took advantage of the confusion. In the moment that they were frozen, I took off after the Butcher. The only way out is through. _

_ As soon as I started moving, the others moved too. I broke through a gap in their circle, but I could hear the off-kilter rhythm of their running, the dragging of their feet like zombies in a horror film. _

_ I ignored them, and followed the Butcher. _

_ I chased him into a diner that was full of rotting food. Everything in sight was awful, covered in mold and maggots. The heather oil helped, but the smell was still there. Only the glasses of soda, still looked like what they were, unable to age, unable to rot. _

_ The Butcher was already in the kitchen and headed for the back door, but I saw an opportunity: the walk-in cooler. _

_ I put the last of my energy into a sprint, and crashed into him as he made for the back, sending both of us sprawling into the cooler. I slammed the door shut and pushed one of the low heavy shelves in front of it. He writhed on the ground across from me, spitting out heather. His skin was still an angry purple. _

_ I turned to check the door, and when I turned back he was on his feet. _

_ “Well,” he said. “That bought you some time, didn’t it? I wasn’t expecting that. You got me to panic. Got me to run. But what now? What’s next?” _

_ His skin bled back from purple to the faint yellow, like the pressing of a sunburn. He stretched, raising his arms above his head, and I could see his strength returning. _

_ The walk-in was smaller than I thought. I could hear hands on the outside of the door, and they slid down the walls on both sides. _

_ “Well?” he asked. “What weapon do you have to finish the job?” _

_ We stared each other down. He was grinning. _

_ “Nothing,” I said. _

_ “Nothing?” he said. _

_ “Nothing,” I repeated. “I brought nothing. I brought myself. I’m going to kill you.” _

_ He laughed. Like a person choking on their dinner. _

_ “You’re going to kill me?” he said. “Ah, Andrew. Let me explain death to you.” _

_ And then he lunged. _

_ Everything seemed to slow down in the span of that second. Like the world was frozen, and it was just me, staring down the death that was coming directly for my throat. My limbs felt too heavy. My head felt like it was full of cotton.  _

_ I thought about you, Abram. About when I thought you were dead, both of the times I thought you were dead, and both of the times when I knew you weren’t. _

_ I thought about Earl, dying alone as a group of men talked ten feet away. _

_ I thought of a person in a WalMart parking lot, calling the police under the belief that it would help. _

_ I thought of a factory on a bay. _

_ I thought of a line of names, a murderer’s legacy on an ugly stretch of highway. _

_ I thought of Robin. _

_ I thought of home. _

_ I thought of you. _

_ And through all of these thoughts, a buzzing began. A buzzing like electricity at the base of my spine. It worked its way up my body, settling into the palms of my hands, too-numb from adrenaline but still able to feel the buzz, buzz, buzz. An uncontrollable near-infinite energy, surging within me.  _

_ It was every emotion locked away, bubbling up to be released. _

_ And for once, I stopped trying to contain it. _

_ I told my angry heart to beat faster. I told my panicked breath to become more difficult, and I told my fear to overtake me. _

_ Make me afraid. Make me angry. Make me feel it all at once. _

_ I took that energy, and I turned it outward. I pushed it into my arms, my legs, my teeth. _

_ Fuck the Butcher. _

_ When he hit me, I hit back. He was stronger than I remembered. It was like being hit by a car. Mass without pity, just brutal physics. But I was hitting, too. Pounding at his face, his chest, his arms. I pulled my knives, and I threw myself at him. _

_ I didn’t feel pain. I was so full of fear and anger that there wasn’t any room for anything else. I fought using every wave of emotion inside of me. _

_ The Butcher laughed when I hit him, and he kept punching, as thoughtless and inhuman as a rock slide on a highway. But I kept hitting too, and eventually, he stopped laughing. I clawed at his face, and his skin started to fall away, and that yellow fat oozed out. _

_ He grunted, growled, flailed at me. He was no longer toying with me; he wanted to destroy me. _

_ But I stayed on my feet. I tore at him with the last of myself, and finally, he was the one that fell, his teeth mashed into his cheek, shouting incoherently. _

_ I went knees-first into his chest. I hit, and hit, and hit… _

_ [a pause] _

_ And then he was dead. _

_ Adrenaline pounded through me. I couldn’t turn off the energy I had found in myself, and I was in pretty bad shape. Bruises, probably a broken rib, definitely broken teeth. But the Butcher laid there, his head a pile of fat and pulp that smelled like mushrooms. _

_ I threw up. Half on the floor, and half on his body. _

_ There was a scratching at the door. The sounds of hands sliding down the walls. And then I remembered that I had only killed one of them, and that I was surrounded by hundreds more. _

_ There was a skittering across the ceiling, like an enormous spider. The lights went out. In the darkness, I could hear groaning and whispering from the walls. _

_ And then a new sound. A bass tone that hadn’t been there before. I sat as still as possible to try and figure out what it was. And then I realized. _

_ It was engines. A lot of engines. The sound became clear. Car engines, and then gunshots. _

_ The whispering stopped. There was scrambling on the walls, like a dog slipping on hardwood, followed by shouts and hisses and more gunshots. Then, nothing. Nothing but myself and the darkness of the walk-in. _

_ The door burst open too quickly, knocking over the shelf holding it shut. The burst of light was nearly blinding, and I could barely make out the shape of a figure in it. Eventually my eyes focused, and I could make out a woman holding a battering ram, a rifle slung over her shoulder. I’d never seen her before. _

_ She looked past me at the body on the floor. _

_ “Holy shit," she said. _

_ She looked at me again, closely, with something between awe and suspicion. And then she clicked on her radio.  _

_ “R, you’re not gonna believe this,” she said, “but Vector J is down.” _

_ There was a general sound of disbelief from the radio, followed by “Dan, bring him-”, but she clicked it off before the voice could finish. _

_ “Come on out. Those things have run for now,” she said, gesturing but not touching me. She seemed to want to give me distance. I didn’t tell her I was grateful, but I was. _

_ She glanced again at the Butcher. She gestured me through the rotting diner and out onto the streets. They were full of armored vehicles. Women and men in uniform sweeping the houses. _

_ But the uniforms did not look like any military I knew. They were all navy blue jumpsuits, with some sort of logo on the chest. _

_ “Who are you?” I asked. _

_ “You did a good thing today, Andrew. A very good thing.” She shook her head. “Maybe an amazing thing. But now it’s time for you to leave.” _

_ “Who do you work for?” I asked. _

_ “Who do you work for?” she echoed back. She was wearing one of the jumpsuits too. I looked at the logo more closely. _

_ Fox Shipping. The same logo as the door of my cab. _

_ “What?” I said. It was the only thing I could think to say, so I said it again. “What?” _

_ “You’re lucky Nathaniel called us. We have a new truck for you, it’s parked outside the wall. This one is… well, it’s a write-off. Got in a bad accident with the gate, but we won’t take it from your paycheck.” _

_ I didn’t know what to say to that. The name ‘Nathaniel’ echoed in my mind like a siren. Why was she calling you that? Why did she know that name? Did you tell her that name?  _

_ I couldn’t piece it together. I stood there, feeling like a drained battery. _

_ “Andrew, listen,” she said. “They ran when they saw us coming, but they won’t be gone for long. It’s truly incredible that you handled one of them, it really is, but you need to go before the rest come back.” _

_ She was right. Despite the questions buzzing in my brain, I let her lead me to the truck. It looked just like my old one. Except, of course, none of my stuff was in it.  _

_ All of my books lost in a wreck in a secret town on a U.S. government air base. How disappointing. _

_ “Goodbye, Andrew,” the woman said as I climbed into the cab, slowly and with some difficulty because of the injuries. “You’ll hear from us again, I’m sure. Until then…” she thought for a moment, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know. I guess just keep doin’ what you been doin’. It’s kept you alive so far.” _

_ She closed the door to the cab, and I started up the engine. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ A few hours later I got another dispatch from Fox Shipping. Like nothing had ever happened. Like they were just a trucking company, “going where they’re needed.” _

_ They want me to go to a distribution center in Vegas to pick up my next delivery. Paper towels. _

_ Which brings me to this spot near the Nevada border. _

_ I’ve decided I’m not going to look for you, Abram. I will let you be lost until that moment you want to be found.  _

_ But I’m not done.  _

_ I know now that the feelings within me are also a strength. And I can feel it now, that energy. _

_ So, new plan. I’m going to find out what the hell Fox Shipping actually is, and why they have a secret army that would make the Butchers run at just the sight of them. What is this company that I work for? I’m gonna find out. _

_ And in the meantime, I’m going to pick up a load of paper towels, and I’m going to drive them somewhere else, and people are going to buy them, and put them out on the counter, and distractedly wipe one hand against a piece, and then throw it away. _

_ Which is to say that I’m going to keep moving. _

_ I’m pulling back onto the highway now. _

_ What is Fox Shipping? What are the Butchers? Who was that woman from the town, and how did she know that name? Why did she call you  _ that name _ ? What is going on, Abram, and how do you play into all of this? _

_ I don’t know yet. Not yet. But I will. _

_ All I know for now is that this isn’t the end of my story. This isn’t the end of my road trip. Not by a long shot. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

** _[static]_ **

** _[radio clicks on]_ **

** _[a new voice, female, nearly gleeful]_ **

** _Right._ **

** _Right._ **

** _Hmm._ **

** _After all, you haven’t even heard from me yet._ **

** _[a pause]_ **

** _Oh, how fun this will be._ **

** _[radio clicks off]_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -end part I-


	11. The Watcher

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ So Abram isn’t dead, and neither am I. _

_ Isn’t that something. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter I: The Watcher.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Names are a funny thing. _

_ We’re given to them by our parents before our first breath is even taken.  _

_ Well, sometimes that’s not true. Sometimes it takes them a bit longer to think about a name fit for a human being.  _

_ Some names have significant meaning. Some parents name their children after political figures, or television characters, or give them names that they hope will carry the weight of that child’s future ambitions.  _

_ Or sometimes, if they don’t want the children at all, they pick the first two names they see on an alphabetical list and then throw the kids away right after. _

_ Check the boxes, dump the kids into the system. _

_ Sometimes, that’s all there is to it. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew saw the Fox Shipping woman almost two weeks later.

It took him a bit by surprise because, considering all they did to make him walk away from the scene at the Other Town, he assumed they’d at least try to keep their routes separate. Or maybe, he thought after a moment, they just didn’t think he was worth worrying about. He wasn’t sure whether he should be offended or amused.

He saw her at a warehouse just outside of Omaha. She was talking to a warehouse worker, talking and laughing while the worker sat on their lunch break. When they got up to go inside after their break was up, they slipped a piece of paper into the woman’s hand. She took it without reading it, and she left.

\--

A month later he saw her again. She was sitting in her truck at a warehouse in L.A. She wasn’t reading something, or looking at her phone, or punching coordinates into her GPS. She was just staring. Straight ahead, down the road, as if caught in some kind of loop in her head, thinking and not thinking at the same time.

When she finally shook out of it and started up her truck, Andrew decided to follow her.

He would be late on his next delivery, but he doubted that they’d fire him.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ You told me you were named after your father. _

_ He was a violent man, you’d said. He beat you and your mom, you’d said. He was in the mob, high enough on the food chain to own a decent chunk of territory but not high enough to do any real damage outside of Baltimore. _

_ At least, that’s what you’d though until you ran. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew followed her east. They drove for a few hours, made it past big towns with too much traffic and smaller ones with too much more. Hills turned into deserts turned into flatlands, and eventually they made it past Palm Springs and toward the Salton Sea.

The desert spanned for miles, and Andrew could make out abandoned tourist stops, skeleton buildings that were once populated by people that had come to the land-locked sea.

They drove along the edge of the sea, and Andrew cursed at the sudden dips and jumps that the road took. They passed a series of washes, each one practically dry, and turned off the highway and into a town called Niland.

Andrew took in the scattering of houses and trailers, the crumbling corner store and the railroad tracks, and was in the process of wondering who would ever want to live in a place like this when he caught sight of where they were headed.

There was a concrete box along the side of the road, the words “Slab City - the last free place” scrawled onto the side in bleeding black spray paint.

The squatters’ city. A mixture of gutter punks and anarchists and artists and retirees looking to make their pension stretch. Anyone who wanted a patch of land without worrying about paying for it. 

The last free place.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Your father had reach across the country. He had more people in his employment than you had ever known. His empire stretched far outside of Baltimore’s limits. _

_ Your father was known as the Butcher. _

_ I can’t help but wonder if that is a coincidence. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew parked his truck along the side of the road leading out of Slab City. There was only one way in and one way out, so all he really had to do was wait.

The moment he turned off the engine, police lights flashed in his mirror. The siren blared once, and then it was quiet.

Andrew sat stock still, watching the car through his rearview mirror. He thought back to the WalMart. He wondered if this would be the same.

It was several minutes before the person in the car moved.

They climbed out, slamming the door behind them and making their way across the gravel road to the door of the cab. Andrew rolled down his window, and leaned out a bit to look down at the officer.

It was a woman, with long blonde hair and bright red lips that were curled into a shark-tooth smile. Her nails were long, much longer than an officer should have, long enough to look like talons and sharp enough to look like they could cut through glass. There was something... off. Something very  _ wrong _ about her uniform, about her smile, about the way she was grinning up at Andrew as if he were a mouse that she had just cornered.

She didn’t speak.

“Can I help you?” Andrew asked. The woman tilted her head as if in thought.

“Do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

Her voice was soft, almost lilting, but there was an undercurrent of steel. Like a honey trap built for flies, nice enough to lure them in until they have no way to escape.

“How fast was I going?” Andrew asked. The woman’s smile grew sharper.

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s why I asked.”

Andrew frowned, looking at the speedometer and then back at the woman.

“I had it on cruise control,” he said. “I’m sure it was on the speed limit.”

The woman hummed. “So you like to give up control, hmm?”

“I’m sorry?” It came out like a question.

“Don’t be.” It came out like an answer. “It’s a common wish. Life is just so complicated, sometimes, so anything to make it more simple is something to be desired.”

Andrew tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

“How can I help you, Officer.”

The woman hummed again. 

“What’s your name?”

Andrew paused before answering.

“Andrew,” he said, finally, and the woman hummed for a third time.

“Andrew,” she repeated back to him. His name felt like a weapon on her tongue. “Have you had the chance to visit the beach?”

“The beach?”

“The Salton Sea. It’s so odd, don’t you think? The sand isn’t right. It’s just not the right texture. It’s covered in petrified fish.”

“I don’t understa-”

“And then you look closer at the sand, and you realize that it  _ isn’t _ sand at all. It’s fishbone. The beaches are made of fishbone, here.”

She rested her hand on the side of the cab, clicking her nails along the metal of the door.

“Is there a problem, Officer?” Andrew asked.

The woman continued to tap her fingers.

_ clickclickclick. clickclickclick. _

“I used to have this problem as a kid,” she said. “I didn’t like uncovered windows. It was mostly after dark, but sometimes it was during the light, too.”

_ clickclickclick. clickclickclick. _

“At night, I would think that there was something out there watching me. Even if just a little sliver of the window wasn’t covered, I’d picture an eye pressed up against it. But during the day, it was different. During the day I would imagine some horrible creature shuffling around the house, and they would be arriving that window soon, and they would see me. But worse-” she smiled, and her eyes looked almost black in the evening light. “I would see them.”

There was a pause, silent and unmoving, and then the woman shrugged. 

“It’s a childish fear,” she said. Her nails picked up their pace. “But as you and I both know, it is not an unfounded one.”

Something in Andrew’s stomach rolled.

“Is there a reason you pulled me over?”

“You were going fast,” the woman said.

“I was going over the speed limit?”

“I have no idea.”

_ clickclickclick.  _

“Then-”

“You were going fast. A big truck, going fast, it’s exciting. Anything that big and fast, you want to chase it.”

_ clickclickclick. _

“What department do you work for?” Andrew asked. “Are you a State Trooper?”

The woman hummed again, pulling her hand away from the cab door to rest a single painted finger against her bright red lips.

“You know,” she said, “I’d have to check the car. I forgot what it said when I got in.”

Andrew felt as though he were falling.

“When you got in?”

“It was dark,” the woman said. “I’ve gotten more used to the dark, now. I’ve really grown as a person.” She stuck out her bottom lip in a mock-pout. “I would have thought you’d be proud of me.”

“You aren’t an officer at all, are you?” Andrew asked the question, though he already knew the answer.

“An interesting theory,” the woman said. She tugged her badge off of her shirt and held it up to Andrew. “Here’s my badge.”

Andrew took it. It was plastic.

“This says ‘police instigator’,” he said, and the woman laughed. It was a bark, a sharp thing, and once she was finished, she looked up at Andrew thoughtfully.

“You know, I could take off both of your arms.”

Andrew’s hands shook.

“Excuse me?”

“With my own hands. No tools. I could simply take them off.” She smiled, as if reliving a fond memory. “I’ve done it before. It was easier than I thought it would be.”

“What do you want?” Andrew asked. He was trying very hard not to throw up. “Who are you?”

“You know,” the woman sighed, “it’s been so long since anyone has asked that. Either of those things, really. I suppose, if I had to pick a name, maybe you could call me Lola. I saw that in a magazine just a few hours ago, actually, at some old 50’s resort, in the remnants of some tattered old magazine that somehow survived the decay of the world around it. As for what I want?” She took a breath, placing her hands on her hips, and looked out at the setting sun. 

“I thought about that earlier, too, standing on that beach made of bone. And I’m going to be honest with you, Andrew.” She sighed, as if disappointed. “I don’t know what I want. So let’s talk about what  _ you _ want instead, hmm?”

She turned to face Andrew again, and her smile nearly reached her eyes.

“What do I want?” Andrew asked, and Lola tapped a finger against the door of the cab.

“To be careful,” she said. “You’ve seen things. And we don’t like people who have seen things.” She shrugged. “I would say it makes us nervous, but we don’t have the emotional capacity for nerves, so it makes us more... agitated. It makes us wild.”

Her eyes were blown wide, almost entirely black.

“Have you ever been made wild?”

Andrew opened his mouth to answer, but Lola waved him off.

“It doesn’t matter, Sweetpea. That was a rhetorical question. Or-” she clicked her nails against the cab door in an attempt to jog her memory. “-not a rhetorical question. What’s the word? A... Oh! A threat!” She grinned up at Andrew. “I’m threatening you.”

Andrew’s entire body was numb from the fear coursing through him. But he leaned out the window anyway, leering down at Lola who stood, unflinching, beneath him. 

“Okay,” he said. “Now it’s your turn to listen. I’ve faced bigger dangers and made it out alive. I’ve faced demons both personal and otherwise. I’ve been surviving long before all of this bullshit started happening. I’ve been picked apart and put back together so many times, it’s a miracle I’m still in one piece.

“I’ve seen things that I could never explain. Not if I spent 100 more years talking into this radio. You want me scared? You cannot  _ make _ me scared. You think fear is new to me? You think fear is the novelty that will change my behavior? 

“For me, fear is living. Fear is surviving. And I’ve survived this long, haven’t I? I will survive even longer.”

There was a long silence in which Andrew did not move, but wondered if Lola would simply end it here. He wondered if she would simply drag him out of the cab, pull him to the ground, and tear him to shreds and leave him for dead. He could barely think straight. He could barely contain his shaking. He hoped that she wouldn’t notice.

And then Lola spoke.

“Oh,” she said. “I like you. You’re the most interesting one yet, I can see why they sent me. They know I love the interesting ones.”

“Who sent you?” Andrew asked. “The police?”

Lola scoffed. “You think the highest it goes is those idiots in blue? You think the Butchers could live in peace on an air force base because some State Troopers are in on it?” 

Her smile was wide, and it looked like it should be accompanied by blood.

“Police don’t understand,” Lola said. “I feed on the police.”

“Try to feed on me,” Andrew said. He sounded more confident than he felt. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Feed on you?” Lola asked, her expression amused. “Oh, baby, we’ve only just met. We have so much more to get through first. I take my time preparing my meals."

She tapped her nails on the door once, twice, three times, and then took a step back. 

“Drive safe now,” she said. “I’m letting you off with a warning. But remember.”

Andrew looked down at her. His expression was blank. “Yes?”

Lola looked up at him. Her smile was gone. “I could dismantle you with just my teeth. I’ve done that, too.”

There was another pause, and then Lola smiled again. “I’ll be seeing you around, Andrew. This is gonna be a good time, I think. Isn’t it nice, when you love your job?”

Andrew did not breathe until Lola and the police car were long out of sight.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Oh, Abram.  _

_ This is much worse than the Butchers, I think. They were hungry. She was smart.  _

_ She was very smart.  _

_ I’m in a bad position here. I hope you’re safer. The woman I’m following is out of sight, of course. I waited for an entire day, sitting in my truck, but she never came back out. I have no idea where she went, or how her entire truck simply vanished, but I suppose I have bigger things to be worrying about now. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Names are a funny thing. _

_ We can be given names by others, or we can take names for ourselves. _

_ I was given mine. You were given yours. And then you changed it, twisted it, made it something entirely your own that no one could take away from you. _

_ Lola chose her name. I do not know her real one; if she even has one of those. Maybe she’s long forgotten it herself. _

_ Your father was given a name. Butcher. It’s identical to the men that we are fighting, with their smiles that are identical to his own. So it makes me wonder, Abram, who gave him that name? And who gave the Butchers theirs? _

_ But the question that I am most interested in answering, Abram, is why the woman had called you the one name that you have tried so hard to bury. _

_ You worked for your name. You paid for it in blood. You repeated it like a mantra when you came home to me after running, as a reminder that you had survived. _

_ You would never give that name up willingly. _

_ So, Abram, tell me. _

_ Who took it? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> buckle in babes because it's gonna be A Ride


	12. Black Boat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay okay please forgive me for my long stretch of not-posting. I've been busy and last week was my birthday soooo I didn't really come online much and I'm sooooorry so please take this mediocre chapter as an apology

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The dogs will know before any of us will. _

_ First they’ll bark. And then I will have between six to fifteen minutes. _

_ Ten to thirty seconds after the dogs start barking, the ground will shake. And six to fifteen minutes later, the tsunami will come. _

_ An earthquake in inevitable here, on the coast just north of the Oregon border. It’s long overdue. _

_ When the dogs start barking, will I be able to make it up the dunes and up to the hills? _

_ [a pause]  _

_ No. _

_ I can see the outcome, can make any kind of backup plan I want, but I would never be able to outrun the wave. _

_ Six to fifteen minutes after the dogs started barking, I would die. _

_ That is what would happen. _

_ No one is safe in any direction. _

_ I won’t worry too much, though. Because when what’s coming for me finally comes, there will be no warning. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter II: Black Boat.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Cape Disappointment.  _

_ You know, contrary to its name, this place isn’t all that bad. It’s actually pretty nice, all forest overlooking the point where the ocean and the mouth of the Columbia River meet.  _

_ It’s quiet, here. Though it’s a bad place for boats. _

_ If they aren’t careful, their end could come before the tsunami hits. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

There was a place along the cliffside that overlooked the ocean. It was a spot high enough for the coast guard to keep watch from their lighthouse, a panorama view of a place where so many boats and humans had floundered, and so many had died.

But now, for Andrew, it was simply a nice view of the ocean.

A coast guard officer came out of the station after almost ten minutes of Andrew standing at the railing. He stood beside Andrew, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, gripping the railing as he pulled himself forward so that his torso was half-leaning over it. He was handsome. Andrew stared.

“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the boats?” he asked. The man opened one of his eyes, and looked at Andrew with a slight grin.

“No traffic right now,” he said. “I think it’ll be safe for me to hang out here for a few minutes. Just don’t tell my bosses about it. They have different ideas of safety.”

Andrew hummed.

“I’m Roland,” the man offered. He was still smiling.

“Not Officer-something?” Andrew asked. He lit a cigarette.

“Yeah,” Roland said, letting out a slight laugh. “Officer Something. But for you, it’s Roland.”

“Andrew.”

“Nice to meet you, Andrew.”

There was a pressure wound up in Andrew’s chest that might have been pain or might have been interest. It was amusement laced with guilt, along with the giddiness of a five-minute crush. With the thrill of flirting with someone that wasn’t on the other end of a radio.

“What about that boat there?” he asked, using his cigarette to point at one out on the horizon. “It seems like you’re derelicting your duties, Roland.”

The boat was medium-sized, painted black and sitting motionless near the mouth of the river. It didn’t seem to even be swaying among the waves. As soon as he pointed it out, Andrew wished he hadn’t. There was a wrongness to it that he couldn’t quite explain.

Roland didn’t look at the boat, but he didn’t look at Andrew, either. Any friendliness that had been apparent on his face was gone in an instant. He was no longer smiling.

“I’m not supposed to talk while on duty,” he said. “Excuse me.”

He went back into the station, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I still haven’t lost my touch, Abram. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew watched Roland leave, slightly confused, but made no attempts to follow. Instead, he made his way off of the cliffs, down to where his truck was parked before moving north a bit to where he had seen an advertisement for a free museum that was more souvenir shop with stuff stuck to the walls.

There was a coin-operated execution in the far corner of the building; one where you put in a quarter and as soon as the castle doors opened, a priest read last rights and the prisoner was hung. Andrew paid to see it twice.

They had a body billed as an alligator man. Andrew stared at it for a very long time, trying to decipher if it was an actual corpse’s head stuck on the body of an alligator. He never figured it out. They had it in a glass case next to a t-shirt rack. For another quarter, he could get a penny smashed with an image of the alligator man pressed into it. He didn’t.

Andrew headed back to the front counter and bought Pina Colada flavored salt water taffy. While he was paying, he asked the man behind the counter about the boat he had seen out on the water. Roland’s reaction was playing on repeat in the back of his mind, and he was curious.

The man frowned.

“Not many people ask about that boat,” he said, punching a few buttons on the cash register as he spoke. “Tourists don’t stick around long enough to notice it. Locals know enough not to talk about it. That’ll be 3.99.” 

“Why don’t locals talk about it?” Andrew asked. He was past subtlety. Either the man would tell him or he wouldn’t. The man watched Andrew for a long moment, as if debating what to say, and then looked past him to the next customer. 

“It’s been in the same spot for three decades now,” he said. He sounded bored, but his voice was also laced with something near paranoia. “It doesn’t seem to be anchored, just unaffected by the currents. Holds its position. No one is ever seen onboard. People who ask questions about it learn that they shouldn’t.” He looked back at Andrew. “I need to help the next person in life.”

“Okay,” Andrew said, wondering why he had bought salt water taffy in the first place. The taste was disappointing, the texture was garbage. He hated it.

The man left the free museum with his four-dollar shitty candy, trying to figure out what to do next.

* * *

_ [radio clicks off] _

_ I remember you telling me that you’d been to Oregon. _

_ You’d run through here with your mother, right? On your way to California. _

_ You would probably hate it here. You’ve always hated the beach. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Down the street from the museum was an arcade called Fun Land. Andrew took to pronouncing it as “Funland”. Like Iceland.

He spent the afternoon playing skeeball.

He figured that he may as well take a vacation in this endless search for answers. He was tired of constantly running, constantly searching, constantly looking over his shoulder to try and figure out when the next threat might come.

So instead, he played skeeball.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Did any of your jobs bring you through here? _

_ You had always told me that you never wanted to go to the beach again. I always respected that. I might not have understood, completely, but I respected it. _

_ Do the people you work for have that same amount of respect for you? Or do they tell you to get over yourself? _

_ Do you go anyway? Do you tolerate it? _

_ I suppose that the people you work for are the same people that  _ I _ work for, aren’t they? _

_ I’m not sure if they have any respect for me. So I doubt that they have any for you, either. _

_ How many beaches have you been to, since you buried your mother’s bones? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew went to lunch at a buffet at a place called Astoria. While he was eating, a man came in looking for him. He didn’t recognize him outside of his uniform at first, but once he did, he nodded in greeting.

“Roland,” Andrew said in acknowledgment as Roland slid into the seat across from him.

Roland didn’t say anything, choosing instead to slide his phone across the table, a photo already pulled up on the screen. It was a photo of a man who looked a lot like Roland - dark skin, dark hair, the same straight nose - but this man had straighter teeth, had blue eyes where Roland had brown. The man in the photo had an arm slung over a teenage boy. The family resemblance was strong in his features as well.

“My brothers,” Roland said. “Bobby is the oldest. Evan is the youngest.”

He pointed at the photo. Andrew wasn’t sure why he was being told this information.

“Uh,” he said. “Okay.”

“Bobby was obsessed with that black boat,” Roland continued, and suddenly, Andrew understood. “He spent hours watching it. He said he never saw anything on board. And then one day, he did.”

“What did he see?” Andrew asked. 

Roland shook his head. “He wouldn’t tell anyone. He rented a kayak instead, made his way out into the mouth of the river and to the boat. Said he had no choice but to get on that thing. He wouldn’t listen to anyone who told him different, and wouldn’t let anyone come with him. We stood on the shore and watched him go. Evan was begging him not to go, but he did anyway. We lost sight of the kayak. We have no idea how, still to this day. It was there one minute, and gone the next. We never found a body.”

“I’m sorry,” Andrew said, because it seemed like the only thing  _ to _ say.

“This is a country of the vanished,” Roland said. He wasn’t looking at Andrew. Instead he was looking out of the window of the restaurant, out across the street, as if his brother might appear in front of him. “It’s a country of the missing. We’ve got a lot of space to put them, you know?”

Andrew nodded. Roland sighed.

“Then Evan, he gets obsessed with the idea that the black boat, like, _ took _ Bobby. We tried to get him interested in other things, like sports or art or shit like that. We even put him through therapy, but it just didn’t take. The answer to his pain was in that boat, and so he goes to the same place as Bobby, rents the same kind of kayak, and takes the same kind of journey.”

Something uneasy settled into Andrew’s stomach. 

“How long has he been missing?“

“It was a year three weeks ago.” 

A silence fell across the table. Roland finally turned to look at Andrew.

“You seem like a nice guy, Andrew,” Roland said. Andrew scoffed, and the corner of Roland’s mouth twitched upward. He gave Andrew a low once-over, and then shrugged. “Maybe in a different life, you know? Maybe in a kinder world. But I do like you enough to tell you this,” he leaned across the table onto his elbows, lowering his voice. “Forget you ever saw the black boat. Never ask about it again; it’s not a mystery to solve. It’s a depth to drown in.”

Roland held Andrew’s gaze for a long moment before nodding once and sliding out of the booth, leaving Andrew alone in the buffet.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I know exactly what that boat is, Abram. _

_ It’s a boat full of Butchers. _

_ A supernatural oddity stealing people away in broad daylight? What else could it possibly be? _

_ [a pause] _

_ [a sigh] _

_ Great. Now I have to stop it. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew headed back from the buffet to his truck, where he pulled out his binoculars and hiked back up to the ridge along the lighthouse to look out at the boat. He knew what he would see when he looked; Butchers. The boat had no name, no markings, and every surface was painted black. Andrew stood on the edge of the cliffs and watched for a long time. There was no movement on the deck, and no signs of life anywhere along the boat. It didn’t move, even with the flow of the currents around it.

And then, suddenly, there was movement.

It happened in the span of a single second; like a blink, nothing-and-then-something. He squinted into the binoculars as if to make out the image any clearer, but it was all there.

The deck was covered in people.

There was hardly any room to move, there were so many of them, but it didn’t seem to matter anyway. Every single person stood, stick-straight, as still as statues, their eyes trained directly on Andrew.

They should not have been able to see Andrew, and yet, he knew that they did.

They were not Butchers, though. They were normal people. Men, women, teenagers, all of different shapes and sizes, all with mouths hanging open and eyes glazed over. Some of them were dressed in clothes that looked like something straight out of an 80’s magazine. Some even looked like they might be from as far back as the 70’s.

And then, on the front end of the boat, there was a man who looked a lot like Roland.

Andrew’s mouth went dry, and he felt as though he might be sick. Bobby stood, slack-jawed, eyes glazed as he stared out across the horizon, unmoving. And across the deck, nowhere near his brother, was Evan. 

They both stared at Andrew, and Andrew stared back.

After two and a half minutes, he put the binoculars away.

This was not a boat full of Butchers. This was not what they did to people.

This was some other horror, completely unrelated to the monsters that he had been chasing.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I have enough bullshit in my life. I don’t need to add more.  _

_ [silence] _

_ [a scoff]  _

_ A boat that eats people. Ridiculous. _

_ It will have to be a story without me. I am leaving. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

And so Andrew left. 

He made his way to his truck, started the engine, and drove away. He drove past the museum and past the buffet and away from the cliff's edge with the lighthouse until he made it to the bridge leading out of the town. It was large, big enough that cargo ships could pass beneath it, and the roads were congested with cars stopped due to unnecessary construction. 

He had been on the bridge for ten minutes, unmoving, when a cargo ship came into view. The black ship was already there, in the corner of his eye, floating, unsettling. Andrew watched, curious, as the cargo ship cut through the water. It was headed toward the shore, but it would pass extremely close to the black boat in order to get there.

And then it happened.

Andrew watched in what felt like slow motion as the cargo ship collided with the black boat. Andrew climbed out of his truck, eyes wide, as many others along the bridge climbed out of their own cars to witness an event that, quite frankly, just didn't make sense. 

Didn't the cargo ship see the boat?

Didn't the boat see the cargo ship?

Either way, it didn't seem to matter. The cargo ship didn't slow down, and instead cut directly through the black boat, splitting it in half. 

The black boat turned up on its side, the two halves lifting a bit and then sinking, like a recreation of the Titanic. It sunk slowly into the water, and Andrew was unable to see a single person on board the entire way down.

The cargo ship sagged forward a bit in the water, the impact tearing a hole in the side of its hull. Andrew watched with a crowd of onlookers as coast guard boats cruised into the scene, rescuing the crew of the cargo ship. Andrew watched a handful of them dive into the water to search for survivors of the black boat. Every one of them came up empty.

Eventually the police got the crowds back into their cars and traffic on the bridge began to move again. 

Andrew put thoughts of Cape Disappointment behind him, and continued to drive away.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on]  _

_ There once was a black boat on a wide blue river.  _

_ The only people on board were the people who had asked the dangerous question.  _

_ One day it sunk, and it was never seen again. It’s a simple story. A story with no ending. The kind of story that happens every day in this country. _

_ [a pause]  _

_ Vacation over, I guess. Back to asking my own dangerous questions. Back to receiving my own dangerous answers. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a big fan of this chapter, but please take it anyway


	13. Abandoned Places

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I have NOT forgotten about this!!!!!!!
> 
> Life is just,,,,, kicking my ass rn and,,,,,, im sorry
> 
> Here is another mediocre chapter. Thank you for your patience.
> 
> Anything pulled from the Alice Isn't Dead podcast belongs entirely to Joesph Fink

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Once, in another life, Abram and I took a very different kind of road trip._

_ We had flown from South Carolina out to California. From there, we drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco; an 8 hour drive made nearly eleven from road closures. _

_ I was miserable. He was fine. _

_ Of course, you were fine. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter III: Abandoned Places.**

* * *

* * *

Andrew sometimes considered hiding somewhere. Considered just leaving the search for figuring out what Fox Shipping really was. The Butchers were gone. The threat was over.

Every time he thought of this, he pictured a woman standing at the side of his truck with a smile that looked like it should be accompanied by blood.

He thought of her, and then he continued on.

It wasn’t long before he found the woman who led the Fox army on their storming of the Other Town. He followed her. What else was he supposed to do?

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ We took the 101-freeway all the way up the coast. _

_ “It’s less empty than the 5,” Abram said. “It will give us more stuff to look at.” _

_ “I don’t know how many times we need to go over this,” I said. “You know, the fact that you hate the sea.” _

_ “I hate it,” he said. “But I think I hate miles of empty land more.” _

_ I couldn’t argue with that. _

_ We took the scenic route. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Following someone was a bit more difficult in a semi-truck. It was easy when Andrew was on solid ground -- when it was just himself, and it was easier for him to slip through crowds and keep his head down. Here, in a massive truck much too loud and too bright to hide, he was exposed. So rather than follow the woman, he did his best to anticipate her.

He cut across likely routes on roads that trucks really shouldn’t drive on. He mapped out the route over and over again in his mind, ensuring that this was the place on her route that she would end up, staring out at the massive field of grass stretched out in front of him. It was huge, on the edge of a narrow highway, with a single tree in the center and a narrow road beside him that branched off to travel through the field. 

Andrew pulled his truck over behind a windbreak, and he waited.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The day we drove up to San Francisco was the day that California burned. _

_ This isn’t technically true; California is always burning. There is a nearly-never-ending supply of fires for every square inch of California during the later months of the year. _

_ The wind picks up, the grass dries out, and one cigarette thrown out a car window later, the entire state is ablaze. _

_ And the day we decided to drive up north was one of those days. _

_ The 5-freeway was closed down in almost four different cities. Entire counties were put on evacuation notice, which meant that entire counties remained in their houses without any concern. _

_ Part of the route we had taken, though, cut through a portion of the state that was _ not _ on fire. It was farm country, which was a long stretch of road surrounded by produce and small businesses sustained by this single bit of highway. _

_ It was the middle of October. Pumpkin patches were a-plenty. _

_ All along the road were stands offering pumpkins. There didn’t seem to be a single plot in the region that didn’t offer pumpkins and hay. _

_ We didn’t buy any pumpkins. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The late afternoon came, and the woman still hadn’t appeared. 

He watched as the sun grew low over the horizon, bathing the field in an off-burnt orange. He watched, and watched, and watched, and then he made a decision.

He wasn’t exactly sure why he decided to drive down the road that branched off of the field. But he did, and about two miles down the highway, he could make out the gouges of big rig wheels on a muddy road, with two wide ruts leading through the grass toward a collapsing farmhouse, slowly being swallowed by the fields it was built to oversee.

He parked the truck down the road and out of sight of the house’s windows, and then walked along the tire tracks, following them across the field. They arrived at the house, and then they stopped. 

He circled the house once. There were no return tracks, or a sign of a truck. Other than the tracks, he wouldn’t have guessed that another human being had passed onto this property in months. Maybe even years.

He made his way up the steps of the farmhouse, and opened the front door.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ In San Mateo county, on a small jut of land called Pigeon Point, there is a lighthouse. _

_ It sits abandoned-but-not, a once-used piece of history now walled off for restoration, used as a tourist destination on sight-seeing trips up the coast of California. You can rent a room there for sixty-eight dollars a night. _

_ Crowds are thinned out by the awkward placing of it. Of course, its positioning makes complete sense with its function -- in order to save ships from sinking, it must be seen from the sea. This does, however, make its ability to pull in travelers a bit harder than it would if it were located, say, right there off of the main road. _

_ It’s abandoned in its use, but not completely in its entirety. _

_ There was a small group of schoolchildren there when we stopped. A field trip, we had guessed, based on the amount of backpacks we saw. _

_ So, really, they can’t be doing all that bad, I suppose. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew picked his way through the farmhouse, though there was hardly anything of worth to be found. Nothing but dust and moth-eaten furniture. The stairs didn’t look strong enough to even support his weight. He made his way to the kitchen, taking in the peeling yellow wallpaper and ransacked cabinets. There were no disturbances in the dust along the countertops, and he contemplated his next move as he ran his fingers along the granite.

When he pulled his hand back, though, his fingers were clean.

He leaned closer to the surface, and ran his fingers along the countertop again.

The dust was painted on.

He checked other parts of the house: real dust. 

He went back to the kitchen: painted on, all of it.

And so he started over, examining the kitchen starting at the furthest corner. Which was how he found, smudged on top of the painted-on dust, fingerprints on one of the dials on the stove.

He turned it, and the floor began to move. 

The kitchen around him began to move downward, the entire room turned into an elevator that carried him down into darkness, and then back into a light. 

The dusty disused kitchen was now at one end of a long, clean, steel corridor.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Somewhere along the stretch of highway between Monterey and Santa Cruz, Abram pulled off onto the side of the road. _

_ He got out of the car, made his way through the grass on the edge of the highway, and stumbled out onto the sand of the nearly abandoned beach in front of us. _

_ I followed, of course, after waiting for a few minutes to see if he would be heading back. We had been stuck in the car for almost five hours. For all I knew, he just needed to pee. _

_ Once it was clear that he was not, in fact, peeing, I climbed out of the car myself and followed the path that he had created onto the sand. I followed his footprints until I found him on a stretch of beach that was slightly hidden from the main road. He stood there, face stone, hands stuffed into his pockets as the ocean wind kicked up around us. _

_ “This was where I burned her body,” he said. _

_ I said nothing. Instead, I looked at him for a long time. _

_ His eyes were distant, staring out over the water as if he were a million miles away but nowhere else but here, all at once. I moved forward to stand next to him. _

_ “Why are we here?” I asked. _

_ “Because the GPS routed us here,” he said. “At least, in this direction. I couldn’t just drive right past it. It’s-” _

_ He waved a hand to symbolize “everything”. I stayed quiet. _

_ We stared out over the ocean together for a long time, silent and unmoving. When we were finished, we got back into our car in silence, and continued our drive without another stop. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The steel corridor led to a security door. That door was open. 

Beyond that was a staircase set into the wall of a large man-made cavern, stretching out for maybe a half of a mile. It was overflowing with equipment and people. 

The scale of it settled in Andrew’s stomach. He felt a bit dizzy as his mind attempted to catch up to his eyes. 

The woman he had been following was waiting at the stairs. 

“We have cameras all over the house, you know,” she said. Her arms were folded across her chest as she leaned against the railing of the stairs. “You weren’t going to be able to stumble into this without us noticing.”

“So what happens now?” Andrew asked. He had faced enough monsters on this trip. If he were to die at the hands of a woman at the bottom of an underground base, so be it.

The woman stared at Andrew for a long time before letting out a breath.

“Andrew,” she said, “why do you keep putting me in this position?” She pushed her way off of the railing and took a step forward. Andrew remained where he was. “I don’t want to do anything to you. I like you. I like Nathaniel, too, and God knows that man loves you.”

Andrew grit his teeth.

“Don’t you dare talk about Abram to me,” Andrew said. “Don’t you dare say that name when I do not even know yours.”

The woman tapped her fingers on her hips, head slightly tilted in thought. And then she nodded. 

“That’s fair,” she said. “My name is Dan.”

She didn’t offer a hand. Andrew did not either. Dan continued.

“To answer your question, what should happen now is that I kill you.” She shrugged, as if to say ‘what can you do’. “There can’t be any risk of this location being discovered, and we both know you’ll broadcast the story. You can’t help yourself.

“But what is actually going to happen,” she said, “is that I am going to let you go, and you are never going to come back here. You are going to respect that I am putting myself completely on the line by doing this. You’re gonna realize that I am not doing this to manipulate you, but because you seem like a good person, and there is just not enough of those.”

“If you think that,” Andrew said, “then you do not know me the way you think you do.”

Dan gave him a half-smile.

“Nathaniel adores you,” she said. “Riko may say otherwise, but that’s enough for me.”

She made a shooing motion at Andrew to get him onto the elevator. Once he was on she stepped back, pressing a button on the wall. As the gears beneath the kitchen-elevator began to screech in protest, she said:

“Drive your truck. Live your life. There’s no freedom in uncovering these secrets, I promise.” 

And then he was back in the empty house, with nothing but moth-eaten furniture around him.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ She may be right. And honestly, she probably is. _

_ But as you know, Abram, I’m not looking for freedom. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Fox Shipping have seemingly endless resources. Not just to build that place, but to staff it and manage it and, most importantly, to keep it secret. Who are these people? Who is Riko, and why did Dan mention him? _

_ Who is funding this war against the Butchers, and by extension, against the US government that is allied with them? That allows them to live in a town on an abandoned U.S. Air Force Base? _

_ And if they have that place, then what else? What other secrets buried in places where no one looks, because they are places that tell a story about ourselves we don’t want to hear? _

_ All over this world, there are abandoned places. Houses wasting away into the tall grass. Office buildings with shattered windows. Churches with empty pews. Lighthouses and stretches of beaches on the sides of coastal highways. And this is leaving aside the places that have been buried or drowned or otherwise destroyed. _

_ Once, a hundred years ago in Poland, there was a wooden synagogue in the countryside and the inside was painted in a dizzying profusion of color. It was truly a monumental work of art. That synagogue was burned. _

_ What hides in the abandoned places? Some hold pain and regret, crimes forgotten and not forgotten. Others hold human beings, living there because they can’t live anywhere else, because they need to hide or because they just need a roof over their heads, even if that roof has holes and a slant to it. _

_ An abandoned beach on the coast of California holds a story that no one wants to tell anymore. And now, warrens and mazes, secret elevators. _

_ In the hollow places, in the abandoned places, there is movement and whispers. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew had just reached his truck when a shadow appeared on the cab beside his own. He thought it might have been Dan, sent by a higher up to dispose of him after all.

Andrew did nothing. At this point, there was nothing he _ could _ do.

“I’ve been following you for a while,” Robin said. 

It had only been a few months since he had seen her last; a few months since they had broken into a police station together. But it felt by years. 

Andrew was surprised all at once by her youth. She was so much more of a child than he had remembered. 

She waved, and the corner of Andrew’s mouth twitched upward.

“You startled me,” he said.

“Ah, I’m sorry about that,” she said. The ghost-smile that hovered on her face vanished, her expression hardening into something serious.

“I need you to help me,” she said. “I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ She’s sleeping now. _

_ I had no idea how much I missed the company until I had it. And besides, how could I resist her request? _

_ It’s not every day that you get to solve a murder mystery. _

_ For now, from your husband, carrying a sleeping child safely through this unfriendly night. _

_ Goodbye, Abram. Stay safe. _

_ [radio clicks off] _


	14. Chain

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Robin and I are at a strip mall off of a turnpike in New Jersey looking for food. And to be frank, this could be anywhere. _

_ [a pause] _

_ We must have chosen this at some point, right? This sense of... same-ness? _

_ [another pause, contemplative] _

_ [a hum] _

_ Honestly, staring at this Subway, I think I can understand that decision. We all like to feel like we’re somewhere familiar. Only now we can have that feeling wherever we are.  _

_ No matter the climate or geography, you come inside the chain and you are exactly where you were before. Whatever Subway or Walgreens or Chipotle you walk in, you are in the same exact Subway or Walgreens of Chipotle from home, like there was a magic door to the city you feel most comfortable in. It’s a positive that can’t be denied. _

_ But we have paid a price for this. _

_ It’s- _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

_ _

**Abram Isn't Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter 4: Chain.**

* * *

* * *

Robin kicked Andrew’s foot with her own as she moved to exit the rig.

“I know you’re probably going to be getting into something real deep,” she said, voice dead-pan as she opened the door. “But I’m fuckin’ starving. So you’re gonna need to save that for a bit- oh. Burgers.”

This last part of the sentence was more of a demand than an observation. Robin had already begun to move in the direction of a storefront away from the truck. Andrew made to follow, but then stopped cold.

In between a Jersey Mike’s and a Quiznos was a large-windowed restaurant that had a sign shaped like a burger.

There, in the window of the storefront, was a neon sign that read “Palmetto”.

After a moment of debate, Andrew followed Robin into the restaurant.

Inside was a counter and a few tables with some plastic chairs. The wall was covered in exy memorabilia, though Andrew could care less about the sport. Neil had followed it. He would know.

“I might get a chicken sandwich,” Robin was saying next to him. He turned to look at her. “Is that weird, getting chicken at a burger place?”

Andrew shrugged.

He had forgotten how it felt to be in someone’s company. It was nice, he thought, to have this bit of time with another human being. The quiet was nice, but sometimes the feeling of another person existing alongside you was nice, too.

Sometimes he was guilty, though, about the fact that Robin was still a teenager; a teenager that should be at home, in bed, safe and secure in her life and her happiness instead of pinballing across the country in a semi truck with him for company.

But Andrew was not the one that murdered Robin’s mother. He was not the one that took that reality away.

Robin had come to him for a reason, and he would help her. But first he had routes that needed to be done, and she was content to run them with him. He doubted that Fox Shipping would fire him, but he  _ had _ been ignoring his deliveries for nearly a month now, and he thought it might be time to finish at least a few.

But now, food.

“What can I get you?” The man at the counter had an annoyed look on his face and a “2” tattooed on his cheekbone. Andrew raised an eyebrow.

“What’s good?” Robin asked. The man seemed to grow more annoyed.

“We’re a burger place,” he said. “So I would believe it would be safe to say the burger.”

“I’d like a chicken sandwich,” Robin said immediately, and Andrew let out an exhale that could have been a laugh. “Andrew?”

“I guess I’ll get the burger.”

The man nodded once. He wrote their order on a slip of paper and pushed it at the man at the grill behind him without looking.

“Be just a minute,” the man at the grill said. The man behind the counter nodded again.

“What’s your name?” asked Robin.

“Kevin,” said the first man. “And this is David.”

“You can call me Wymack,” the second man said. He slapped down a fistful of ground meat onto the flat top and smashed it with a spatula.

“How long have you guys been here?” Andrew asked. He eyed the sign in the window from across the room. From this side of the glass, it was backward. The word “Palmetto” blinked back at him like a beacon.

“Five years,” Kevin said. Wymack grumbled a small ‘give or take’ from the grill behind him.

“Did you open it together?”

“No,” Wymack said. “I’ve owned this place for a good twenty years now. He came looking for help one day, and I gave it to him.”

Andrew stared at Kevin. “And you never left?”

There was a pause. Kevin’s gaze fell to look out the window at the parking lot on the other side.

“Sometimes,” he said, “the place that you are is safer than the place you had been. I chose the safer option, and I am comfortable sticking with it.”

“And I’m not going to refuse someone willing to work,” Wymack said. “There was no need to turn him away.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to keep him,” Andrew said. He didn’t look away from Kevin. “What are you running from?”

Kevin’s expression grew panicked. “Nothing,” he said, but it was much too fast.

Andrew watched him for a long moment before shrugging. “It’s your choice,” he said. “But you can’t run forever.”

Kevin’s panic morphed into a frown.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Take it from someone who is looking for a runner,” Andrew said. “You will always be found in the end.”

Kevin grew quiet for a moment, before turning and heading back into the kitchen.

The paper napkins all had the word “Palmetto” on them. Robin took one and did a sketch of Kevin holding a burger and giving an annoyed looking thumbs up to the viewer. On their way out, she presented it to him. He said nothing as he accepted, but Andrew was able to catch the amused snort Wymack let out from the grill.

An hour onto the road Robin let out a frustrated groan from the passenger seat. Andrew raised an eyebrow in question.

“I left my scarf,” she said. “I guess it belongs to them now.”

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ It’s hard to tell regions apart just by looking at the buildings. A CVS is a CVS, a Starbucks is a Starbucks. Cookie-cutout companies built as familiar safe-havens in every town you visit. They’re built for the Play-It-Safes -- the ones who want to pretend they’re adventurous until it’s time to eat or they run out of travel-sized shampoo. _

_ Every place is built like every place, and so the only thing that tells you that you’re moving is the nature that’s been allowed to stay. _

_ Trees turn into mountains turn into valleys turn into deserts. The names of trees change with the climate. Time zones change with the distance. _

_ [a pause] _

_ It’s up to nature to tell us when we’re moving. Otherwise, each Kmart sign looks like each Kmart sign. Every Subway sandwich tastes the same. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Three and a half days later, in a strip mall somewhere north of Madison, Robin caught the name again.

“I guess they’re a chain,” she said, sliding out of the truck and heading across the parking lot toward the sign that read “Palmetto.”

Andrew was slower to exit the car, but he followed all the same.

“You forgot your scarf.” Wymack called out to them from behind the grill as soon as they entered. “Kevin, go get it from the back.”

Neither Andrew nor Robin moved from their place in the doorway as Kevin ducked into a back office to gather Robin’s scarf. When he came back a minute later, they still hadn’t moved.

“What are you doing here?” Robin asked, as if she had run into an old friend at the supermarket.

“We hardly ever leave the business,” Kevin said. “There’s too much to do.”

“Same as last time?” Wymack asked. They could only nod.

They made their way back to their spots at the counter. Robin shook her head as she sat down. “Weren’t y’all in New Jersey the last time we saw you?”

Wymack shrugged as he watched Andrew’s burger grill.

“Maybe. Who knows.” He put two plates up onto the order window. Kevin walked them over.

“You decide to keep playing chicken?” Andrew asked, and Kevin let out a scoff.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “You would play chicken too, if you knew what was out there waiting for me.”

Andrew began picking at his burger, tearing it into smaller pieces and moving them around on his plate. “I may not know what your monsters look like,” he said, “but I sure as fuck know mine. There are dangerous things on these roads, I agree. I’ve seen them. I’ve fought them.”

“Then you should not talk about these things so casually,” Kevin said. His voice had an edge to it. “You of all people should know-”

“That there are real monsters in this world,” Andrew cut in. “You should not waste your time being afraid of the fake ones.”

It was quiet for a long time. Eventually, Wymack spoke.

“You know,” he said. “He’s right.”

Kevin turned, eyes wide. “What?”

“You’re young, Kevin,” Wymack said. He didn't look sorry. “Much younger than you should be to work in a place like this. You haven’t taken a day off in five years. You came in here, your hand bloody and broken and-”

“You told me that you would keep me safe here,” Kevin said. “That he wouldn’t be able to touch me if I stayed.”

“For the night,” Wymack said. “I was expecting it to be for the night. Or at least until your hand got better. Don’t get me wrong, Kevin, I think you’re a bright kid with a good head on your shoulders, but at the same time, that’s why I want you to think about yourself here. You could do a lot more than this.”

He waved a hand around the restaurant as if to prove his point.

Kevin was nearly shaking at this point. Andrew took a bite of his burger.

“My potential won’t matter when he kills me,” Kevin said. “You don’t know the resources he has at his disposal. Listen, if Riko finds out where I am-”

Andrew almost dropped the piece of burger he was holding. 

“Wait,” he said, “who-”

Wymack cut him off as if he hadn’t spoken.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. “Kevin, honestly. What is it that’s even keeping you here? There are a lot of good places you could go to do something more with yourself. It would be better if you just-”

“I’m here because my mother sent me,” Kevin interrupted. “She told me before she died that if I ever needed to be safe, I should find my father.”

There was a heavy silence as the words that Kevin had said settled into the air around them. Andrew watched realization dawn on Wymack’s face before he turned to look at Robin, who was sitting on the barstool beside him with her chicken sandwich halfway to her open mouth. Her eyes were wide.

Andrew debated asking about Riko, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it as he watched Kevin's expression grow more panicked with each second. Instead, he turned to Robin, nudging her with his elbow and nodding in the direction of the door. She set down her sandwich quickly, and they left. The restaurant was still silent as they opened the door, the tiny bell to signal the arrival of customers louder than it had every right to be. 

As the door shut behind them, Andrew snuck a look over his shoulder through the glass. He could see Robin’s drawing tacked up on the wall beside the register.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Just went through a Dunkin’ Donuts that had a drive-thru window. On the wall of the kitchen, visible to the customers, there was a huge screen tracking the percentage of their “productivity target” that the employees were hitting.  _

_ It was at 67 percent.  _

_ This percent is 67 percent of what they’re supposed to be. We are 67 percent satisfied.  _

_ We are also 33 percent disappointed. _

_ It’s terrifying what we’ve allowed them to do to us, just so we can get coffee a few seconds faster. It’s a trade we all made, but we were never given time to think through the ramifications. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

On the highway between Houston and New Orleans, alongside a stretch of Bayou and also of absolutely nothing else, Andrew pulled off for gas and food. They both saw it, squeezed between an empty storefront with a half-collapsed banner saying “WE BUY GOLD” and a nail salon with only one employee. Neither said anything as they made their way past the sign that read “Palmetto”.

Kevin raised a hand as Wymack called out a greeting from behind the grill. Andrew and Robin settled into their spots at the counter.

“You two seem happier,” said Robin, using the toe of her boot to nudge at the bottom of the counter, spinning herself back and forth on the barstool.

“We talked things out,” Wymack said.

“It took a long time,” Kevin said, “but we figured it out eventually. It’s nice that you’re back. You’ll be one of our last customers.”

Wymack began cooking without waiting for their orders.

“You’re closing down?” Andrew asked, though it came out as more of a statement than a question.

Kevin squared his shoulders as he looked across the counter at Andrew.

“You’re right,” he said. “I can’t run forever. I’m not going to throw myself into the line of fire, but I also shouldn’t pretend that the problem doesn’t exist, either. I should still be able to live my own life without constantly being in fear. I’m going to try doing that.”

“I’m just getting old,” Wymack said, shrugging. “Might as well do what I want, you know?”

“This restaurant has been in a different city every time we visited,” Robin said slowly. She looked between Kevin and Wymack. Wymack shrugged again.

“These things happen,” he said.

“Do they?” Robin said.

“What is Palmetto?” Andrew said.

Wymack shook his head. He turned off the grill, leaving the kitchen and coming out to lean against the counter. Andrew had been right about the tattoos.

“If you don’t know that yet, don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll find out when it’s time.”

Andrew frowned.

“And Riko?”

This time it was Kevin who shook his head.

“If you hear that name, turn the opposite direction and run.”

Andrew paid the bill, and the four of them said their goodbyes.

Robin’s sketch was still tacked to the wall, but it had faded, and the edges of the napkin had gone brittle with age.

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ At a Fox Shipping center near Buffalo, I asked about the delivery I did last year to a factory in Delaware. A factory named Palmetto. _

_ “What is it?” I asked. _

_ The shift supervisor went stiff. _

_ “Where did you hear that name?” she asked. _

_ “You assigned me a route for them last year.” _

_ “We most certainly did not. You need to tell me everything- no. Hold on.”  _

_ She got up and reached for a phone. “Not me, I don’t want to hear a word of this. I’ll call someone in here, and you are going to tell them everything you know about Palmetto.” _

_ She started dialing and I got up and walked away. She shouted at me to wait, but I was most certainly not going to do that. _

_ [a pause] _

_ What is Palmetto, and why did the name upset my supervisor so much? _

_ Who is Riko, and what position in this company does he hold? _

_ [another pause, contemplative] _

_ [a hum] _

_ Another mystery for another day. It’s time to help Robin with what she came to me for. _

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew ditched the truck for a rental car. This was something that didn’t require much stealth, but it didn’t exactly require a rig, either. They drove through New York until they arrived at the Hudson River. There in Kingston, on the western shore, was an area of chain restaurants and strip malls.

Andrew circled the lots until he found it. Next to a half-vacant mall anchored by a Target and what used to be a JCPenney, there was a line of fast-food franchises with one empty storefront.

Robin got out of the car first, walking up to the glass and tracing a finger along the still-visible restaurant sign that read “Palmetto”.

“Guess they really did move on,” she said.

Andrew said nothing. They stood for almost three minutes staring at the storefront together before getting back in the car and driving across the river until they reached a gas station on the southern edge of Dutchess County. 

“Yeah,” Robin said softly as they crossed the threshold of the parking lot. Her voice was very far away. “This is where my mother was murdered.”

“What now?” Andrew asked.

“Now,” Robin said, “we’re going to figure out who really murdered her.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [silence] _

_ [radio clicks off] _


	15. The Other Robin Cross

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back👀

_[static]_

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_We search for signs and prophecies of the great changes that are waiting for us, but most often they come suddenly, in mundane places while we do mundane things. _

_A heart attack while watching Netflix. _

_A phone call about a loved one’s accident after clocking in for work._

_[a pause]_

_A sudden act of violence when you’ve stopped at a gas station._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter V: The Other Robin Cross.**

* * *

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[silence]_

_[muffled voices, distant]_

_[Robin:]_

_Are you sure?_

_[Andrew:]_

_It’s your story to tell. Not mine._

_[Robin:]_

_Who will listen?_

_[Andrew:]_

_Does it matter?_

_[shuffling]_

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Robin:]_

_My mother’s name was Robin Cross._

_[a pause]_

_You know, people don’t think twice if a man names his son after himself. Sometimes, there are even multiple generations of the same name, passed down like some kind of important torch that’ll burn out without some kinda heir to carry it on. _

_It’s a legacy. Somethin’ that a man can be proud of._

_And yet, when a woman does the same thing, people get so confused._

_[a pause]_

_[a sigh]_

_When I was little, I didn’t really think anythin’ of it. My name was Robin Cross, same as my mom. She was an amazing woman. Why would I be anything less than proud?_

_I didn’t realize it was somethin’ weird until I hit middle school, and people started bringin’ it up more. Kids are mean, you know? After a while, it makes you defensive. By the time I turned thirteen, I refused to go by Robin._

_[Andrew, slightly muffled:]_

_What did you go by?_

_[a pause]_

_[Robin:]_

_Skip._

_[another pause, longer than the last]_

_[Andrew:]_

_Seriously?_

_[Robin, defensive:]_

_Seriously. Don’t be an asshole._

_[a beat]_

_Besides, I don’t go by that anymore. Ever since... Ever since my Mom, I’ve gone back to Robin. I’m not upset about it anymore. I get it, you know? I get it more, now that she’s gone. I wish I could tell her that._

_I wish I could..._

_[silence]_

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Robin:]_

_I was the one who saw it first that night._

_We had stopped at an ARCO in East Fishkill, New York. Mom had started the pump and I'd gone inside for snacks. I bought a bag of Doritos. Spicy nacho. And a Coke._

_It was on my way out that I saw it. Or... Him? Them, maybe, would be the right term. Since there were two of 'em, and all._

_Well... One and a half._

_At first I thought it was someone who might have been injured, or maybe a couple of druggies or somethin'. Then I got a closer look._

_It was a man, crouched and bend at the waist, thrashing at another man below him._

_Looking back on it now, I can understand what he was doing. But back then, I don't think my brain could physically comprehend the fact that this man was eating the other person. Was devouring him._

_I did what any child would do, in a situation like that. Because I was a child._

_I mean, if we're getting technical, aren't I still a child, really?_

_At what point do we consider ourselves adults? When we age enough to look like one? When we have to raise ourselves? _

_When we witness a man being torn apart in a gas station parking lot?_

_Regardless, I did what any child would do._

_I ran to my mom._

_"Mom,” I whispered. “Mom!”_

_I tugged on her sleeve, pointing in the direction of the back of the ARCO. Mom turned, and to her credit, she did not wilt, and did not run. Instead, she set her jaw, said “Robin, honey, you get inside the station and find somewhere to hide and don't come out”, and she pulled out her phone to call the police._

_But of course, the police wouldn’t have been able to help her._

_Just after I left was when the Butcher noticed her. If he had known about me, known that there were two witnesses-_

_[a pause]_

_[a breath]_

_But he only knew about one witness._

_Only one person who needed to be dealt with._

_But it wasn't just the Butcher and the man that he was devouring._

_There was a third person there that night._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

Robin walked around the ARCO, putting on a show of investigation. She made careful circles around the building, her hands shaking as she clenched them tight at her sides. This place, Andrew knew, was a wound.

“We’re not gonna find anything here,” she said, finally, after staring at the corner of the AM/PM for a long time in silence.

“No,” Andrew said. The word was heavy in the air.

“It’s been years,” Robin continued, as if trying to convince Andrew. Though he knew she was trying to convince herself instead. “There wouldn’t be any physical evidence left.”

“No.”

“But this is what it was, Andrew. I remember a second person. The Butcher had help.”

She stared for a long time at the last place she had seen her mother alive.

“I need to know what really happened," she said.

“I know,” Andrew said.

Robin nodded. “OK, let’s go.”

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_The Taconic Parkway is beautiful. A road that time both avoids and controls, all at once. _

_It feels like a walk in the woods. _

_But taking a walk in the woods is something you wanna do slowly, on foot, not speeding in a car. It's something you want to do on a marked path, where you know it's safe, not wandering through the underbrush praying you'll find a road._

_And the Taconic Parkway is a dangerous road. No streetlights, sharp turns, long periods with no shoulder, just a rock face on one side and a thin barrier on the other._

_Life is, in many ways, a balancing act between beauty and danger. And the Taconic is paved right down the middle._

_Just north of Hudson, where we had mediocre falafel at a kosher restaurant that advertises itself, almost certainly incorrectly, as “the last kosher restaurant until the Canadian border”, we saw something strange on the hillside by the road. _

_It was a huge carving of a human face, and in front of that, a giant figure seated on a throne. Their head was flattened and curved into the shape of a ball. There are other statues all over the hill. It looks like a shrine to a god no one has ever worshipped._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Robin:]_

_I came back out when my mother started shouting._

_When your mother tells you to hide and not come out, you follow her instructions. But when those instructions are book-ended with her cries of panic, I would ask you: would you stay hidden, in that case?_

_I wasn't even sure what I was planning to do. All I knew was that my mother was yelling, and I felt the need to do something about it._

_ The lights had conveniently dimmed on that side of the AM/PM. There was no sound of any police coming, or of anyone coming. _

_There was no sign of any help at all._

_My mother had her back to the wall. The Butcher stood in front of her, his teeth bared in a mock-smile._

_“You wanted to see,” he had said in a voice that seemed to be pulled out of his throat. He dragged one leg forward, the rest of his body leaning backward._

_“Now you will see.”_

_I stepped toward them, but my mother caught my eye. Even through her panicked tears, her expression was hard as she put up one hand. _

_"You stay away," her expression said. "You hide."_

_[a pause]_

_And I did, I guess. I don’t remember what next; it’s all sorrow and blood. _

_But I do remember a couple hours later, huddled up in the brush on the other side of the ARCO. I remember footsteps in the leaves nearby. I guess the Butcher was looking for me, but he never found me. He still hasn't._

_But there's one more piece to this story, and it’s the piece we’re trying to understand now. _

_There was someone else there with the Butcher. I know there was. I remember a person wearing a hoodie, standing next to my mother right at the end. _

_In the darkness, though, I couldn’t pick out any more details. Just the Butcher and the figure in the hoodie. _

_Small. Faceless. Their arms out toward my mother._

_Someone helped the Butcher kill her, and I want to know who it was._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_We had wings at a bar in Red Hook. An older man and a young man sat at the end of the bar._

_“I lived through Nixon, you know,” the older man said. He shook his head._

_“I lived through Nixon and I never lived through anything as scary as this.”_

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

Unsure of what else to do, the next morning they went to the Duchess County Sheriff’s office in Poughkeepsie. The officer at the front desk seemed friendly. A middle-aged man, kind of heavy-set, with a mustache that made him look similar to the Walrus from Alice In Wonderland. His name tag read "Higgins".

Andrew detested this man immediately.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

"Great question," Andrew said. "Though I don’t know if anyone could."

"We're looking into a murder that happened a few years ago," Robin cut in, elbowing Andrew aside to give the officer the details. He nodded along with her, and did some searching on the computer.

“Huh,” he said eventually, his eyebrows pulling together as he frowned at the computer. “This isn’t right.”

“What is it?” asked Robin.

“The case was closed. I don’t know why that would have happened. It’s a murder investigation, double homicide, only a few years old and no suspects arrested. Why would they close this?” His frown grew deeper as he read through the notes they had on file. 

“Why would they close this?” he said again.

His tone wasn’t confusion, but despair. He knew exactly why they had closed it. He looked at Andrew and Robin, lips tight, as if he had something to say but his mouth wouldn't physically let him. What eventually came out was:

“Go have lunch at the Palace Diner. It’s just around the corner. Food’s good there.”

Robin thanked the man. Andrew did not. The two of them went to the diner. It was a grand 24-hour institution with a fast parking lot and their own in-house bakery.

They were halfway through a couple of turkey clubs when the man showed up, holding a filing box and huffing as if he'd run a marathon. 

“I want you to know that there are some of us who don’t believe in it," he said. "That there are some of us who believe that this is the wrong thing, what they’re doing. I want you to know that we are not all on their side.”

He put the box on the floor and slid it under their table with the toe of his boot. 

“There isn’t much, but take it." He turned to leave, and Andrew could hear him muttering under his breath as he left. "Not me, mm-hm. At least not me.”

Andrew detested him a bit less.

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_There are a few vineyards in the Hudson Valley among the apple orchards. _

_There is, as there are in many places not notable for their wines, a serious effort to create a wine industry here. 'Effort' is a key word in this scenario. I mean after all, the best New York wine I’ve ever had was maybe OK. _

_But then again, as the climate changes, who knows? Certainly the areas famous for wine will lose their climate, and so one of these places we laugh about will become the new Bourdeaux. _

_Or maybe everyone will be too busy being refugees from our drowned cities to worry about wine, then._

_I guess we'll wait and see._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

The box was almost empty. 

No real investigation had been done on the case. The police knew who the killer was, and so, officially, they had no leads. The bare minimum of paperwork - which is still a lot of paperwork - none of which said anything. It did nothing but restate basic physical facts of the scene, describing actions taken by the officer in a step-by-step style of writing designed to intentionally repel the reader through tedium.

Robin Cross Senior, another victim of the Butcher.

But there was one item of real interest. It was tucked away in a manila envelope, folded over and mummified in packing tape. Andrew took the knife from his bag and tore it open. 

Inside was a VHS tape.

Andrew looked at Robin, one eyebrow raised.

“Camera at the gas station?”

“Oh god, I hope,” she said.

“Do we have any way to play this?”

Robin shrugged. “Well, the region is known for antiquing.”

They went to the grimiest antique store they could find in Hudson. It was a basement shop with childlike paintings of animals flying kites and riding skateboards outside. There was a taxidermied moose head on the wall, well on its way to falling apart. And in the back, for 15 bucks, there was a VCR/TV combo.

They got a room at a cheap one-level motel in Saugerties, though the only things brought into the room with them were the TV and the tape.

Andrew closed the drapes. Robin plugged the TV in and stuck the tape into the slot. 

* * *

_[VCR clicks on]_

_[Robin:]_

_It's all static._

_[Andrew:]_

_Give it a minute._

_[VCR clicks, a sigh of relief as the tape begins to play]_

* * *

Andrew and Robin watched the screen, almost without breathing. There was Robin’s mother against the wall, and the Butcher stepping toward her. Not the same Butcher that had followed Andrew last year, but a different one. Though it was just as misshapen and toothy. 

And then there was Robin, coming out of the AM/PM door, seeing what was about to happen, and screaming. The Butcher, turning to see the younger Robin, and breaking into a drooping, melted smile.

“That’s not what happened,” Robin said. Her voice was barely a whisper, but she sounded so sure. “I hid. She gestured for me to run. He never saw me.”

On the tape, the Butcher turned back to Robin’s mother. He didn’t walk so much as fall into her, his hand on her throat. 

And there, behind them all, was a person in a hoodie. Andrew frowned. He didn’t see them emerge from anywhere. There was nothing, and then there was something; a person in the shadows, like they had always been there and he had only now noticed them. 

The person in the hoodie rushed forward toward Robin's mother. In the tape, the young Robin made a sobbing scream that we couldn’t hear because there was no sound. She, too, ran for her mother.

Before anything else could happen, the Butcher tore Robin Cross Senior’s throat out. 

He took it, like someone might take a bottle of water out of a fridge. He moved his hand back and there was something wet in it, and Robin’s mother had a gaping wound where her throat had been.

Robin was screaming again. Though not on the tape, but in the room next to Andrew. He let her fold herself into him, and she screamed into his shoulder.

The person in the hoodie reached the pair, and put their arms around Robin’s mother. They seemed to be easing her to the ground, their hold firm but gentle as they moved. The dying woman stared deep into the unseeable face of the person, as though she had just seen something even more astonishing than her own death, and then she was gone.

The Butcher tossed what he had taken from the woman onto the ground, and then just as casually, picked up Robin as her run brought her within reach. He held her easily, like a parent looking at a baby. He was laughing. His jaw was wobbling wider and wider.

And then, the person in the hoodie got up from their crouch, reached over, and took hold of the Butcher’s head. They yanked backwards and the Butcher flew to the side like he weighed nothing.

Robin collapsed to the ground and then... the person in the hoodie took the Butcher apart. It was the only way Andrew could comprehend to describe it. The person tore off his arms and his legs and then popped his head off like he was a rag doll. It was very quick.

Robin was lying unconscious on the ground. The person in the hoodie picked her up and carried her out of frame, and the footage went to black.

* * *

_[VCR clicks off]_

* * *

Robin touched the screen, her fingertips brushing the still-warm glass with delicate movements. She was silent for a long time, the room around them heavy. Andrew waited patiently until she spoke.

“They saved me," she said. "All this time I thought they helped the Butcher kill my mother. I thought I had gotten away on my own. But I would be dead too, if it wasn’t for whoever they are.”

“Whoever they were, they were very strong,” Andrew said.

“They were,” Robin said. “And it seems like they’re on our side.”

“So what now?” Andrew asked her.

“Now, I have to go again,” she said. She stood, and Andrew followed. They stopped at the doorway.

“What will you do?”

“I’m goin’ to seek out this person, whatever they turn out to be," Robin said, as if it were the most obvious answer. "There is a powerful force of good somewhere. I won’t chase after evil yet. First I will seek that good.”

She held out her arms, and Andrew gave her a quick nod. Robin's hug was fleeting, but it was strong all the same.

“You’ll see me again,” she said.

"I'd better," Andrew said, and then Robin was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every day I think about this fic going unfinished and every day I cry,,,,,
> 
> I proooomise I will keep going with this. I just started a new job that has me cranking out 13 hour days like 5-6 days a week so. I'm chipping away I promise.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me;;;


	16. The Light In The Desert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure about posting this chapter because tbh this is one of my least favorite chapters of the podcast. But it has some really good lines and moments of suspense so I decided to keep it.
> 
> With that said, most of this chapter is direct from the podcast. So just know that this one is mostly thanks to Joseph🙏🏻
> 
> Also, this entire chapter is italicized. It's a constant back and forth between Andrew and Lola. As a heads up.

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_I'm almost out of cigarettes. Down to three. But there are no towns on this map. Not for a long time. No cars, either._

_[Lola:]_

_Absolute silence for miles and miles. There are no lights, here. No towns, no cars, no watchers to watch me watching._

_[Andrew:]_

_It's dusk and there are dark clouds lingering. The road isn't visible as far as the horizon in either direction. I pull my car onto the shoulder and hop out into the mud. Two cigarettes, now._

_[Lola:]_

_Pull off the road, little mouse. Cut your lights and you're invisible. Well, almost. I could take you now, if I wanted to. It would be easy, and there would be no one to see it happen._

_[Andrew:]_

_It's nice, standing on the shoulder of the highway and looking for miles in the distance and seeing no one. This is the kind of silence that I appreciate the most. The absolute silence of distance. I step into the center of the highway, and I wait._

_[Lola:]_

_Little mice shouldn't play in the center of the street. It would be fast, pressing my foot down on the gas pedal and running you down. But I'm patient, and now is not the time. I don't want to cut anything short._

_I lay on the hood of my car, enjoying its warmth as I look up at the sky. It's grey, with the darkness of a storm creeping into the corners._

_[Andrew:]_

_A sky about to break into violence._

_[Together, in unison:]_

_I close my eyes, and I wait._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn't Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter VI: The Light In The Desert.**

* * *

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_I'm on a plateau one moment, and then I come around a turn and I am looking steeply down into a valley. There's been no change in elevation, but the change in perspective is astonishing. Like I'm on a ledge, looking straight down at a floor coming up to meet me._

_[Lola:]_

_I'm going to miss this when it's done. This chase has been interesting; this job a web that I have woven quite nicely. But nothing lasts forever, I suppose. I mean, to take a few years off of someone's life..._

_[a scoff]_

_Is that so much of a crime?_

_[Andrew:]_

_I had thought I was on solid ground. But I was actually far, far in the air. There is no metaphor to be taken there, no reason to relate this to my life. It’s just a drive, just a plateau, just a valley. _

_Just a moment of dizziness so intense it was almost pleasure. Almost worth feeling._

_[Lola:]_

_What are those years truly worth? Would he have even gotten them? Lived them to their full potential?_

_Isn't it better to die in such a purposeful, clear way than to stagger on until an organ you don’t need starts making its cells wrong?_

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_There's a light zigzagging through the sky. It's not the moon, or the stars, or an airplane. It's just... A point, moving from one side of the sky to the other making impossibly sharp turns. I take my eyes off of the road to watch, but I don't move my foot off of the gas pedal. The road is straight, and there's no sign of anyone for miles. I focus on the light and watch it move until my tire hits the shoulder and I'm brought back to my driving._

_When I look again it's gone._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Lola:]_

_Past the larger towns are the mining towns. A few houses and a school attached to a quarry and a processing plant. It’s dusk, and the plants are still churning. Busy workers, for now, until their jobs end up cut somewhere in the future. Just as all jobs are cut -- or will be, eventually. Everyone’s jobs are expendable. _

_Except mine. _

_This kind of violent hunger is always in demand. _

_I could sleep for a thousand years and wake up to a world that needed me._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_I can see the road dropping and climbing for miles in front of me. It's getting dark, but the shadows of the hills are visible in my headlights with the sun setting behind them._

_[Lola:]_

_A man has stopped his car to take a picture. I can see why._

_[Andrew:]_

_There’s a ridge along the slope facing me. It doesn’t look natural._

_[Lola:]_

_[an inhale, an exhale]_

_This expanse – it's majestic. Truly, breathtaking._

_[Andrew:]_

_As the miles pass, I realize I’m looking at the entire length of a freight train. One that would take 10 minutes to clear an intersection, snaking its way along the tracks parallel to my truck._

_[Lola:]_

_I stop, too. I take the man into the bushes and leave him there. I get into his car, and pull it back onto the road._

_[Andrew:]_

_And I’m at a distance where I can see the whole train passing along the slope of the mountain._

_[Lola:]_

_Truly. Breathtaking._

_[Together, in unison:]_

_The rain comes, finally._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_Signs warn to avoid this road because of possible flash floods, but I take it anyway._

_[Lola:]_

_I want to see the water. I want to feel it under my car._

_[Andrew:]_

_I want to go on the record as saying that flash floods can’t be as bad as they’re made out to be._

_[Lola:]_

_I want to stand on my hood while the waters rise above me. I want to be hit by lightning. I want to see whatever you see when the electricity enters your brain._

_[Together, in unison:]_

_Lakes form suddenly in the desert. Soon, all of the land on either side of the road is water. Waves lapping at an asphalt shore._

_[Andrew:]_

_You know, I may have been wrong._

_[Lola:]_

_Drown me, wash me away._

_[Andrew:]_

_The rain is worse. I’m on a narrow and windy pass, not meant for a truck this size. _

_[a pause]_

_I may have made a mistake. But the only way out is through._

_[Lola:]_

_There are stretches out here where no one else is in sight. There are no witnesses. There is no one to help._

_[Andrew:]_

_A few miles before the flatlands, I turn a corner and there's something in the road. And then there's a bang, and the bottom of my cab is dragging. It's a huge rock, pulled up into the bottom of my cab. I pull the truck to a stop, switch on my hazards and hope my lights will keep anyone from crashing into it, but-_

_[Together, in unison:]_

_There’s nowhere to move on a road this narrow._

_[Lola:]_

_Take my hand. Take my hand and walk with me to where the highway is no longer visible._

_[Andrew:]_

_I get on my back in the mud and I’m under the cab, downhill on an incline under the bottom of it and I’m thinking-_

_[Together, in unison:]_

_Okay, so this is how you die._

_[Andrew:]_

_The rock is jammed into the bottom of the cab. I try to pull on it, but it’s not moving. A car drives by, and has to swerve out of the way. I have mud all down my body._

_I look to my left and there are a pair of legs standing by the driver’s side door. _

_“Hello?”_

_I shout to be heard over the rain and the cab between us. The person doesn't answer. I crawl my way out, banging my head on the front bumper as I do. _

_“Did you stop to help?” I ask, as if anyone has ever done that for me. _

_But when I straighten up after getting out from under the cab, there’s no one there. Just me, my truck, and the rock stuck inside of it._

_[Lola:]_

_Almost, little mouse. That was almost it._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_I want to get off of this pass. So I start driving, and the rock is scraping on the road, and it sounds like the cab itself is coming apart. And then there’s one last terrible ripping sound and the rock falls away. Everything still seems to drive alright, so I try not to think about it as I keep going. _

_I stop at Stovepipe Wells. It's a motel dressed up as a western village. It's incredibly dumb. There’s this terrible smell, like burning rubber, and all I think of is how fucked my engine is. But as I walk away from the truck, the smell follows. The whole area is saturated with it. _

_I stay the night in their RV area, and the next morning realize that I was smelling the mesquite trees. My truck runs fine._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Lola:]_

_There's a light in the sky, zigzagging. _

_I know most things. There are a few secrets kept from me. But that little light, moving through the dusk – I don’t know it. _

_It is a stranger, and so I greet it as a stranger, with my hand raised and a smile on my face. _

_See? I am polite to strangers. At least until the moment where I understand what it is I need from them; until I know how to best leverage their existence._

_But maybe this light is not usable by me. It doesn’t seem to fly so much as to float past our world. If it is beyond my use, then it is not worth bothering with. _

_I nod to it and drive on._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_It's still pouring rain, the wind whipping through the droplets, turning them into a fine mist. It’s not cold, but it’s on the edge of cold. _

_At least I’m not the Korean couple huddled by the ranger station. He's in a tuxedo, she's in a flowing wedding dress and train. There's a professional photography crew following them around. She folds her arms into the damp wrinkles of her dress, shivering as they wait for the desert that they came for. _

_Later I'm sure I'll see them posing on a sand dune that the rain has made solid, leaning into each other and feeling the cold in their formal wear shoes._

_At night, the stars are covered by the clouds, and the light returns._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Lola:]_

_In the distance, there is an object in the road. I taste bitter on the tip of my tongue and I try to hold it there. I try to make the bitter taste linger._

_[Andrew:]_

_It’s me and my headlights and this straight and empty road, and this light in the sky, turning sharp corners on itself._

_[Lola:]_

_The object is a coyote. She was waiting for me, standing in the middle of the road, calm._

_[Andrew:]_

_I want to feel. I don’t understand the impulse, exactly, but I switch off my lights anyway. And now I’m in the dark, sightless, and I can’t even feel the speed. It’s so calm, the grumble of the engine like the hum of my own body, and this light moving around in front of me._

_[Lola:]_

_I hold her brown eyes with mine, and we understand each other. Low creatures, taking blood where we can. As natural as the salt flats, as natural as a rock face._

_[Andrew:]_

_I feel like I could touch it. I want to feel more._

_I press harder on the gas until I’m going faster and I can’t see the road at all, and the light is like an idea of peace that I’ll never have. _

_It’s a world where none of this happened to me. _

_I let myself feel._

_[Lola:]_

_We look at each other for several minutes. I prefer her company to the cowards that drive around this country as if it belongs to them._

_[Andrew:]_

_Am I trying to get myself killed?_

_[Lola:]_

_I wink, and tell her I need to get back to my prey, as I’m sure she needs to get back to hers. _

_As I drive away she watches me, still unmoving, in my mirror._

_[Andrew:]_

_I switch the light back on and it’s the road, straight as it ever was, and I’m still driving on it – and the light in the sky is gone._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Lola:]_

_It’s time for me to switch cars again. _

_So when a tourist couple pulls onto the side of the road, a brief stop to stretch their legs and change who's driving, I help myself to them and then help myself to their vehicle._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[silence]_

_[Lola:]_

_On the 247 north of Lucerne, the fields are all dust, and the wind is kicking up._

_[Andrew:]_

_It's like something from a story. A wall of dust, the height of a small skyscraper, billowing from the fields. It’ll be on the road in a minute._

_[Lola:]_

_And then it’ll be invisible. And then it will happen._

_[Andrew:] _

_It’s daylight, and then I enter the cloud, and enter the world of sepia. I can see maybe a few feet in front of me. I want to slow down, but I’m worried that anyone behind me won’t know to do the same._

_[Lola:]_

_It’s nice in here. A bubble of blindness in a valley blinding with light._

_[Andrew:]_

_I think I can see headlights. Maybe a car trying to pass me?_

_[Lola:]_

_Now, little mouse. It happens now. _

_But it’s OK. _

_I’m right here with you._

_[Andrew:]_

_My windshield grits up. Everything is so quiet._

_[Lola:]_

_Maybe 10 seconds. Breathe easy, little mouse. _

_Enjoy the breaths as they come._

_[Andrew:]_

_There -- it’s the light. The light from the sky._

_[Lola:]_

_That light._

_[Andrew:]_

_Zigzagging._

_[Together, in unison:]_

_What is that?_

_[Andrew:]_

_The light lowers. It’s just in front of me through the glass. I can see nothing, but I keep driving until the entire cab is enveloped in light. I don’t feel heat._

_[Together, in unison:]_

_I don’t feel anything._

_[Andrew:] _

_I don’t care that I don’t know where I’m going. I speed into the light._

_[Lola:]_

_And then…_

_[Andrew:] _

_And then I am out of the dust cloud, and I’m back near some farm fields. Behind me, the dust moves onto the other side of the road. There are no cars behind or in front of me. There is no strange light._

_[Lola:]_

_You haven’t escaped, little mouse. Maybe you get a few days more, maybe a few weeks. _

_But you haven’t escaped._

_[radio clicks off]_


	17. Oracle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All rights to Alice Isn't Dead, and all direct quotes, belong entirely to Joseph Fink.

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I’ve been to a lot of rest areas in my life. _

_ Hell, I’ve been to a lot of rest areas this  _ week _ . _

_ The parking is usually easier, and I like the in-between feel of them; the feeling that you could get lost in one, and never come out. The feeling that time doesn’t exist, not really, and the idea that it’s just you, alone, passing through a not-quite-there area alongside other people who are there, alone, in this not-quite-there area. All of you existing, together, entirely alone. _

_ But for the next few days, or maybe weeks, or maybe even forever, I’ll stop at truck stops and gas stations instead. Hot dogs under heat lamps, tired people who grumble along as they exist completely beside you in this place where time moves forward, entirely, painstakingly  _ there _ . _

_ I’ll take that crowd to avoid being alone at rest stops; or at least, rest stops where I used to feel alone. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter VII: Oracle.**

* * *

* * *

Gilroy was where garlic was grown.

Andrew could smell it from almost ten miles outside of the city. He wrinkled his nose, hitting the “recycle air” button on his dash so that the smell wouldn’t seep in through his cab vents any more than it already had. It was too late, though. The smell had made it in, and now he was stuck with recycled garlic air. He sighed heavily and continued his drive.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Jerry Morrissette was a medic in Vietnam.  _

_ He was also an alcoholic, and also a monk.  _

_ He was hired by Caltrans to run a maintenance crew at the Crystal Springs Rest Area in 1990. So he parked a decommissioned ambulance behind the bathroom, and he lived in it.  _

_ At the time, the rest area - close enough to be convenient to the city but far enough out to be considered rural - was a popular site for drug trade and gang conflict.  _

_ Jerry, though, tended the grounds like they were his own garden, because that’s what they became. The bathrooms were always impeccable, the vases full of flowers on the sinks. Eventually, he moved out of the ambulance into a Caltrans maintenance shed. To help keep crime away, he painted some of the parking spots with “reserved for California Highway Patrol”, and it worked. The drugs and the gangs moved. Jerry went on living, unknown to the state of California, in a rest area he sometimes referred to as his “monastery”. _

_ A few years later, the state found out and tried to evict him. But the people of the Bay Area fought for him, and Jerry was made official. The state put up a trailer and he moved in with two dogs, Butch and Spike. And the bathrooms were clean. And there were flowers in the vases. _

_ Jerry Morrissette, the monk of the Crystal Springs Rest Area. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Crystal Springs Rest Area had a wonderful mixture of Google reviews, including (but not limited to): “If you’ve ever wondered if cops spit or swallow, come here.” And “good coffee”.

Andrew had to agree on the coffee.

On the hill above the rest stop, there was a statue of a man, bulbous and ill-formed, pointing at the highway. It looked like he was scolding the passing cars.

Even though the lot was pretty full, the bathroom was empty, which Andrew was grateful for. The air felt different than the air outside, though. He let that not-entirely-real feeling pass over him, letting the idea of time slip away from him for just a moment. There was a glass vase full of fresh flowers on the sink.

All of the stalls were empty, so he chose the one in the back corner. He had been in the stall for less than a minute when he heard a voice, there-but-not. It was close to a whisper, though it sounded very far away. Andrew looked at the floor of the stall next to him. Though it had definitely been empty a moment ago, there was now someone sitting in it.

“ **What have you seen** ?” the voice asked. 

It didn’t sound like the voice was in the room with Andrew; it sounded like a cassette, or a record or an early model mp3. It was flat and faint, and almost static-like.

“What,” Andrew said flatly, because – well, because all of this, because everything about this situation that was happening.

“ **Two of you** ,” the voice said. “ **Like now but two of you, later. Soon, or already, I can’t tell.** ”

The feet in the stall next to Andrew’s shifted. They were wearing Converse, beat up and red, with a hole in the right one. The person was sideways, facing the divider between them that seemed too flimsy now.

“I’m sorry,” Andrew said, though he wasn’t very sorry at all. He still had no idea what was going on. “I think you have me mixed up with, uh…” 

Honestly, Andrew wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence, as - again - he had no idea what was going on. And then he realized that he didn’t have to finish it, and so he left the stall and headed briskly for the sink. 

As he did, he turned to the stall to look.

It was open, and it was empty.

Andrew stopped. 

Andrew blinked.

It wasn’t empty anymore.

There was a person in a hoodie, now, crouched in the stall. The hoodie was pulled over their face so Andrew couldn’t see any detail in the shadow of it.

The person was slumped, looking at their feet, whispering to themselves, though Andrew couldn’t make out any specific words.

And then they were standing. 

It was not that they stood, but that they were sitting and slumped, and then the next moment they were standing, sagging against the stall divider.

And then they were at the sink, running their hand over the flowers in the vase, still whispering.

And then they were looking at Andrew, their hand tearing at the petals.

They whispered louder.

Andrew turned and sprinted for daylight like it was his last lifeline, and as he did, he was able to pick out one word from their whispers.

_ “ _ **Palmetto.** _ ” _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ It started with the death of a dog.  _

_ Spike died, and Jerry started drinking again. His work suffered. His monastery slipped back toward being a rest area again.  _

_ Then he called a Caltrans supervisor, who he believed had poisoned his dog, and threatened him.  _

_ Police came, his trailer was searched. Three guns were found. _

_ Why did Jerry Morrissette, monk of the Highway Monastery, have three guns? _

_ Well, he did live in a parking lot that was once frequented by drug trade and gangs. But maybe it was because he lived in America, and so, for better or worse - or worse, or worse -  _ _ he could. _

_ The state began eviction proceedings.  _

_ Insult of all insults: they didn’t let him clean his bathrooms anymore. Brought in another worker to do it. The state even cast out on the most fundamental aspects of his story.  _

_ Maybe there hadn’t been so much crime at the rest area before.  _

_ Maybe Jerry Morrissette hadn’t done much more than be real good at cleaning.  _

_ His single-handed transformation of a troubled place into a beautiful garden might have just been very good PR. _

_ And that was it for Jerry Morrissette. A dead dog, a drunken phone call, three guns, and the last of the decade and a half of his life cast into doubt. _

_ An article from 2014 said that he moved to a trailer in south San Francisco. As of that article, he had been given six months to live. _

_ Cancer, of course. Always cancer. _

_ There is no more sign of Jerry Morrissette on the internet after that. I presume he died, but I cannot tell you for sure.  _

_ I can only tell you that there was a man who had gone to war and come back, and gone to religion and come back, and who turned a rest area into a place of worship for a few years.  _

_ And then his dog died and it all ended. _

_ There’s no moral to this story. _

_ But there is a real human life. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Though Andrew couldn’t explain what he had seen, and his first instinct was to drive until the gas tank was empty, he also felt like this might be one of his few chances to get the answers he was looking for. 

He had seen this person in a hoodie twice before. 

Once by the Fremont Troll, and again in video footage of a murder, rescuing Robin Cross from the Butcher.

He needed to think, and so he climbed the trail up to the statue on the hill. The plaque said it was a Father Junipero Cera. It was lumpy and squat, and the face drooped at an awkward angle. The longer he stared, the more Andrew realized what it looked like.

A Butcher. The vague shape of a human, but not put together right, and stuffed in a skin that wasn’t the correct size.

Andrew sat for a bit longer, watching the way that it pointed at the highway, chastising but unseeing.

He went back into the bathroom.

* * *

A group of college-age men tumbled into the bathroom in front of Andrew, shoving at each other and laughing loudly. He felt a bit better about this, if he were being honest, knowing that he wouldn’t be alone inside.

And yet, once he crossed into the rest stop bathroom, he  _ was _ entirely alone. The men were gone. The air felt different than the air outside, a very different temperature. And the smell, like a slow-moving river, somewhere between clear water and algae, filled the air. There was a vase with flowers on the sink.

Andrew looked into each of the stalls and there was no one there. He heard movement behind him and he whirled around quickly to see an older man with a long gray beard, wearing an orange safety vest, carefully arranging the flowers in the vase.

“Excuse me,” he said, but the details of his form were lost in the dimness. He nodded slightly and left, careful not to get too close as he moved around Andrew.

As he watched the man go, Andrew heard the whispering start up behind him. The person in the hoodie was sitting in the stall, folded over at the waist and whispering at the floor tiles.

“Hello?” Andrew asked.

The whispering got faster, more urgent, but the person didn’t move. Andrew reached out his hand for a moment, as though he’d be able to touch them, but he would not be able to touch them, so he took my hand back.

“Hello?” Andrew tried again.

“ **You again!** ”

The person in the hoodie was sitting on the sink to his left, legs dangling over the edge. Though they were close, their voice sounded miles away. The person tilted their head.

“ **Or is this the first time?** ”

“Who are you?” Andrew asked. “What do you know about me?”

“ **I… am…** ”

They thought about this for a moment, kicking their dangling feet.

“**I am an Oracle,**” they said. “**In hidden places on the highways, in the bathrooms at gas stations, behind the painted scenery of roadside attractions, in vans parked far out in the grassland. There are oracles on these roads.**”

“You can see the future,” Andrew asked, though it sounded like a statement. His voice echoed off of the cement walls.

“ **No** ,” they said. “ **You misunderstand me** .”

“What did I get wrong about what you said?”

“**No,**” they repeated. “**I meant you misunderstand ****_me_****. You do not understand what I am**.”

“What do you want?”

“ **I want to help you** .”

They were back in the stall now, flopped backwards against the tile like a person unconscious. Andrew still couldn’t see any face under the drawn hood.

“ **You are in danger** .”

Andrew scoffed. “Huge revelation,” he said. “You’re blowing my mind.”

“ **You don’t understand the danger.** ”

“There’s a war,” Andrew said, as if trying to prove that he did understand.

“ **Yes!** ” they said.

“And I’m caught between the sides.”

“ **Hhnnnnyessss** .”

“So that much I understand,” Andrew said.

“ **Nooo** ,” they said, and though they were insistent, they did not sound frustrated. “ **You don’t even understand the most basic ** ** _shape_ ** ** of it.** ”

There was the question again. The question that Andrew thought might be at the heart of all of this.

“What is Palmetto?” he asked. The Oracle pressed on.

“ **One day you will understand** ,” they said, like a mother patiently explaining the concept of adulthood to a child. “ **And when that day comes, we will be there to help you.** ”

“What is Palmetto?” Andrew asked again, more insistently. He was far past aggravated.

The person in the hoodie rose, hanging limply by their arms like a toy in a child’s hand. They were whispering again. They came toward Andrew, the oes of their shoes scuffing along the pristine floor.

When they were very close, Andrew could smell what he knew now, unmistakably, to be the thick smell of heather.

He opened my mouth to scream, and as he did he saw for a moment in the hood two human eyes, and the wet reflected light of tears falling from them.

And then -- laughter.

One of the college-aged men was coming out from one of the stalls. The other two were at the sink. They were laughing about something that had happened at school, some mix-up between a girl and her boyfriend about wearing matching shirts that had gotten very out of hand.

Andrew was standing there, trembling, his back against the sink. One of the men looked at him oddly, but did not ask if he was okay.

The three of them left the bathroom. Andrew looked at the sink. 

There was no vase, and no flowers. 

The floor was muddy, and needed cleaning. 

He leaned on the sink for a long time, trying to put some version of himself back together again. And then he pushed off of it and, shaky but himself, stepped back out into the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm here!! 
> 
> I feel awful that most of these past few chapters are not my own, but just kind of an AFTG retelling of AID but, honestly, I just want to get some of these chapters out to continue moving forward. So please forgive meeee.
> 
> Also!! I started ANOTHER new job, one that's got a solid schedule and is MUCH less hectic than my other one, so I should HOPEFULLY be able to continue with this more regularly! (she says, for the millionth time)
> 
> Thank you for being patient<3


	18. Absent Family

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ There is more here than I understand. _

_ I mean, I guess that's true in most aspects of life. You only see what's in front of you; the thing making you miserable, the thing that's ruining your life, the one thing that would make everything "better". _

_ The thing that's making me miserable: traveling this entire country trying to piece together a stupid puzzle that was left behind by my stupid husband. _

_ The thing that's ruining my life: my stupid husband and his stupid puzzle, and being away from him for so long that it hurts. _

_ The thing that would make everything better: some straight fucking answers, for once. _

_ Because I have fragments of answers. _

_ Fragments of the puzzle with edges that are just too jagged to fit properly together. Like a string of corner pieces with nothing to connect. _

_ Fox Shipping. A giant organization run and financed by... Who, exactly? The Butchers? Who are they, and how does the government tie into their system? _

_ And now, this person in a hoodie. _

_ And this name, over and over, this name. _

_ Palmetto. _

_ [a pause] _

_ One thing Bee always taught me was that when the big picture is too hazy, or all the puzzle pieces gathered at your feet become too overwhelming to look at as a whole, try looking at them individually. Look at the details you're sure about. _

_ I've been to a Fox Shipping base. _

_ For some reason, they let me leave. _

_ That's a piece of the puzzle that I think is time to reexamine. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn't Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter 8: Absent Family.**

* * *

* * *

The farmhouse was exactly as he had left it.

It was still a pathetic excuse of a shack, the hollow shell of a once-happy home, a place full of memories, loved in by people who had worked every day in the field that had been in their family for generations.

Or was it never that at all?

Had it all been fake, it's construction meant to look as decrepit as possible, the memories as fake as the dust painted onto the countertops?

Every meticulous aspect of this house, an absolute lie.

He moved quickly, unsure if he'd be stopped by someone before he got into the house. He was sure they had cameras, so there was no point in trying to sneak in. He was going to simply go inside; if they tried to stop him, he would deal with them as needed. 

The inside of the farmhouse was even worse than before. There were scattered bits of plywood and debris scattered across the splintered floor, seemingly attempting to cover the holes in the hardwood where the cracked foundation poked through. He had to step over a pile of shattered ceramic when entering the kitchen, where the late afternoon sun shone through fragments of glass in the windows.

The stove was still there, and he marched forward with a sense of purpose, reaching for the dial and turning it quickly.

Nothing happened.

Andrew frowned to himself and turned the dial back to its original position and back again, and still, nothing happened.

Again, again, again, five times he tried. Each with the same result.

He looked at the dial closer, noticing a real layer of dust settles over the painted layer. Nothing in this kitchen had been touched in months.

He kicked the stove, cursing to himself.

The base was gone.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I'd never truly understood the need to travel. _

_ Some people get restless, being in one place for too long. Abram was like that. _

_ He would get anxious, constantly feeling the need to look over his shoulder, always wanting to do something, to go somewhere he had never been. _

_ Never the same place twice, Mother said, never the same place twice. _

_ And so he didn't. He would never be comfortable at home for longer than half of a year at most. After that, he would have to go somewhere. Somewhere new, somewhere different, somewhere that he hadn't been in the past. _

_ We would always plan for this. He would spend 2 to 3 weeks in a new place, and I would spend 2 to 3 weeks at home doing whatever it was that I did at home. _

_ [a pause] _

_ God, I've already forgotten what I did in my free time at home. _

_ But anyway, he would do his thing and I would do mine. But the difference between then and now was the fact that we planned these trips together, and he would always come home. He had always promised not to run. _

_ [a pause] _

_ Traveling has always been a nuisance. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew was angry.

He was angry, and he was confused.

What he had seen under the farmhouse had been massive. It had been a space large enough to hold thousands of people comfortably within its design, something that had to have taken months to complete and cost millions to build. There was no way a base like that had been just... Moved or abandoned. Not over one person.

But at the very least, this entrance had been sealed off completely.

And how was he supposed to find another entrance when it could be anything acting as the switch? A specific twig laid out to face North in the middle of the woods seven miles from where he stood, a single latch on the back of one of the hundreds of billboards lining the highway, another empty farmhouse, but this one made to look brand new.

There were too many options. Too many puzzle pieces to focus on.

So instead, he thought about the more pressing question sitting on the forefront of his mind: to seal off an entrance like this was an incredible waste of time and money. It would have, at this point, made much more sense to just kill him when he was there in front of them.

So, by this logic, why hadn't they just killed him?

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [silence] _

_ [a sigh] _

_ I can admit, though, that there is a kind of specific romance to travel.  _

_ Or maybe it's the stranger, more specific romance of traveling constantly.  _

_ Rootlessness can be attractive, you know? It really can be. The map it creates in your head, one of those ones with all of the little colored push-pins sticking out of it.  _

_ When someone brings up Oklahoma City, or Boise or Chicago, or Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine – and for each of those, you have a memory. Being able to think: oh yeah, I’ve been there.  _

_ You remember how it felt in a personal way.  _

_ Abram would tell me, sometimes, about the way some cities would feel. About the way New York felt in the winter, like some Hallmark movie that was never quite real. He told me about the alleyways in Chicago, about his paranoia in Nebraska, about the way the sand felt between his toes on a beach in California. _

_ [a pause] _

_ Direct knowledge of the world is a fundamentally seductive thing to acquire. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The moth-eaten couch that Andrew sat on was dirty and uncomfortable, but it was grounding. He used it to focus, staring at a spot on the floor in front of him as he asked himself:

Why, exactly, was he alive?

He didn't ask himself in an existential way, but from a purely curious viewpoint.

Why is he alive now, in this moment, when Fox Shipping should have already had him dead?

He briefly entertained the idea that maybe they didn't kill innocent people, taking a moral stance on all of this. But he brushed that off almost immediately. Andrew himself wasn't particularly innocent. He was meddlesome at best.

Besides, the base he had seen was insane. Their operation could not be any smaller than nation-wide, so there would be no way to keep something like that a secret unless you are willing to kill to keep it.

This lead him to believe, then, that the answer was the second possibility.

They wanted him to see, and then walk away with that knowledge, alive.

Why?

Fox Shipping is at war. Which means, logically, that if they wanted something, it would be due to the fact that it benefits them in some way. Which means-

Which means that Andrew, somehow, must have a role to play in this war. And in order to point him in the right direction, they let him glimpse into their operation and survive.

If that was the case, Andrew thought, then Fox Shipping must be very stupid to believe he would play along.

And then it hit him.

If he was important to Fox Shipping, that likely meant that he was a problem for the Butchers. Which would explain why he was targeted so quickly in his search for Abram by those... Things.

But the Butchers wouldn't give up just because he escaped once or twice, right? If he was this important, they must still be searching for him. They must be-

Andrew's thoughts were halted as a car approached the farmhouse.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ There is the other side of constant travel, of course.  _

_ The  _ true _ side of it all. _

_ It's this sense that you never belong anywhere. Or the constant worry that you'll forget about where you’ve been -- or worse, where you are.  _

_ The franchises amplify this, of course. I stop for lunch in a Chili’s because it’s there, and there’s a lot of room to park my truck. And I look around and realize, I don’t even know what state I’m in. What city, what state, how long I've been on the road; it's all white noise, now. _

_ It’s a feeling of bottomlessness, like the floor has disappeared. Like a shitty magic trick. I’m falling, but also I’m not. I’m eating a chicken fajita salad in a plastic booth. _

_ Beyond that, there is the gap that forms between you and other people.  _

_ They're going to be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. They'll be stationary, living the lives they always live, buried deep in their routines and habits that they've built over dozens of years. _

_ Me, though? I barely know where I’m going to be tomorrow.  _

_ I have no idea where I’ll be next week.  _

_ I couldn’t begin to guess my locations for the year, not even within a 300-mile radius.  _

_ Romance and sadness have always gone hand in hand, of course, and the romance of travel never more so. The bloom of excitement is so quickly replaced by the quiet despair, and looking out another motel window at another motel parking lot, and the highway on the other side of the tall wire fence.  _

_ And this knowledge that, no matter where you go, it’s still you, standing in a room with yourself, looking through the same eyes, thinking the same thoughts. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew sat on that dusty and uncomfortable couch much longer than he should have.

It just didn't register, at first, the fact that someone was driving up to the house, parking in front of it with their headlights blaring through the window.

Once the headlights switched off, though, Andrew scrambled onto the floor and crawled to the windowsill.

It was a police car. The lights and siren were off, but the shape was unmistakable. The driver door opened, and the interior light came on.

Sitting in the passenger seat was a man in a police uniform. He was dead, with wounds all over his neck and torso. Tear-tracks cut through the blood on his face. Andrew assumed that his death was not quick.

Coming out of the driver's seat was a woman Andrew had met before, on q road near the Salton Sea. Her smile cut across her face like broken glass, and she tapped her fingernails on the roof of the car as she leaned against it, her chin resting on the back of her hands. She was dressed haphazardly in something like a police officer’s uniform, but the details were all wrong.

“Andrew?” she shouted. “Little mouse, little mouse, are you in there?”

Her smile grew a fraction of an inch. “I mean, I know you are, so I guess that was a dumb question. So sorry!”

She pushed off of the car, brushing off her hands in three quick slaps. 

“I followed you here. You’re very easy to follow. I can smell you!” She tapped her nose and laughed. “I can smell you from three states away. You smell really good!"

There was a beat of silence, and she laughed. "Oh, little mouse, take that as a compliment!" There was another pause, and then, "I’m coming in now." 

Andrew fell backward away from the window, pushing himself upright and scrambling toward the kitchen, past the staircase that was too broken to climb and would lead him into cornering himself. He ran down a hallway off of the kitchen and into a child's room in the back of the house, closing the bedroom door and shoving a half-rotting desk in front of it just as the front door was kicked in. 

“Why are you poking around this place again?" Lola's voice scratched its way down the hall, clawing through the floorboards at Andrew's feet to settle in front of him. "Is there something here for us to find?”

Andrew heard her kick at something breakable; the sound of shattering ceramic matched the tone of her voice.

“You don’t have to answer that," she said to the stifled silence around them. "If there’s something to find, we’ll find it. When faced with a problem, we tear at it, and we keep tearing and tearing and tearing and eventually, everything gives.”

She said it just like that,  _ everything gives. _ Simple and matter-of-fact, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

The sing-song taunting grew closer. Andrew turned to face the back window. It was broken, with huge chunks of glass protruding from around the frame at all angles, but he thought this might hurt less than Lola's nails under his skin. He grabbed an old sheet that was poking out of a half-broken dresser drawer, wrapping it around his palms and hoping the rest of him didn't end up sliced through.

"Andrew, honey, it's okay!" Lola's voice was deceptively sweet. Like a mother comforting a child that had fallen off of a bike. "It doesn't have to be difficult. It's time."

There was a muffled thump as she pushed at the door, but it was stopped briefly by the dresser. It gave Andrew enough time to get a majority of his body through. He was almost out entirely when his left leg got caught.

There was another thump as the door met the dresser. Andrew scrambled and grabbed at his leg, wrenching it toward him violently. The glass popped out, a large shard of it caught on his jeans, at the same time the door flew open.

The dresser flew across the room as though it were made of paper. It hit the wall next to the window, and for a moment, Andrew was frozen where he fell.

Lola came into the room, her eyes blazing in the late afternoon light.

"There you are," she purred, and Andrew scrambled upright to run. Lola simply laughed.

"Listen darlin'," she said, and she didn't seem to be in any hurry, "I have a job to do. So here we go!"

Lola pounced.

It was entirely inhuman. Her laid-back energy compressed like a spring-loaded toy, coiling and releasing in a burst of violent movement. One moment she was in the doorway and the next she was at the window, her arm striking out to latch onto Andrew's arm in a vice grip.

Andrew's wrist screamed under the pressure. He took the chunk of glass that had fallen from the window and drove it into her shoulder, directly beneath her collarbone.

She made a soft grunt as she stepped back a bit, almost in surprise. Her grin didn’t falter, but her grip on Andrew’s wrist did, and he used the opportunity to tear his hand away from her and run back toward the front of the house.

He had left his truck too far away. He had left it dropped off the side of the road almost a mile back in order to avoid getting caught which, at this point in time, seemed a bit useless. There was no way he would make it back there now.

He ran to the cop car instead, throwing the door open to find the keys still sitting in the ignition, Lola’s confidence in finishing the job turning out to be the thing that would save him now.

The cop beside him had been dead for a bit. For a moment he debated trying to run instead, the smell being so overpowering that he was almost unable to think straight. But he narrowed down his train of thought, and focused on the puzzle pieces in front of him. Focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

Turn the key.

Start the ignition.

Run.

The car tore out of the dirt lot in front of the house, fishtailing as he sped toward the road. Once at the edge of the lot he chanced a look in his mirror and, to his surprise and absolute horror, he saw Lola, her skin red from the glow of the brake lights, glass sticking out of her chest, chasing the car like a cheetah after a gazelle.

For a moment, she started gaining on him.

And then the gear change kicked in, and she finally disappeared as the car sped off.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Runaways tend to find each other. _

_ There’s a sense of familiarity that comes with seeing someone who is the same as you. Someone who has no place to call their own. Not really, at least. Not fully. Not permanently. _

_ Because after a while, the road becomes your home. It’s people in suits that fly off to sales meetings twice a week -- the Hampton Inn breakfast buffet becomes more familiar than your spouse’s cooking. It’s the band that sits in the back of a tour van for eight months out of the year, and the gas station food line-up that you come to know religiously. It’s people like me, driving our trucks, the familiarity of long empty roads becoming a silent solace rather than a lonely patch of land. _

_ Runaways aren’t always running away from the obvious. Some are just... running. _

_ And it becomes easier to spot those people, the longer you look. You can recognize it in the other’s eyes, the feeling of having seen too many miles in too little time. You can recognize it in their walk, in the way they carry themselves, the way they can acclimate to any environment almost instantly. You can compare stories about Cleaveland, about Ann Arbor and Birmingham and Fort Lauderdale. They know the romance and they know the despair, and so you don’t have to talk about it either. You can just ask them how the Hampton Inn is in Madison, Wisconsin, and they’ll know exactly what you mean. _

_ Runaways tend to find each other. _

_ I started today questioning the lack of clarity around the puzzle I am currently assembling. I sat in my cab this morning staring at the pieces in front of me, not understanding which to focus on first. _

_ Well, that’s been decided for me. All of my other options have been taken away. _

_ Now, I am being chased. Or, more accurately, I’m being hunted. So my only way forward is... Forward. My only option is to run. The direction doesn’t matter. What matters in the distance. What matters is the speed at which I run. _

_ Is this what you felt like, Abram, all those years with your mother? _

_ I do wish that I could tell you where I am. You would know how to best handle this. You would have a plan already laid out by the time we escaped from the farmhouse. You wouldn’t even hesitate. _

_ But you’re not here. Our paths are different now, after all. You were on your way to saving something bigger than us all the last time we met. And me? I am only going to be able to save myself. _

_ And maybe not even that. _

_ I guess I understand, now, why you left for so long. _

_ Never the same place twice, Mother always said. Never the same place twice. _

_ Mary may have been a monster, but she knew how to run from them, too. _

_ [a pause] _

_ [a sigh] _

_ Fox Shipping wanted me to see what they are, and they wanted me to remember it. There is a role for me in beating the Butchers. What the role is, I have no idea. And whether or not I’ll live to see that role, I have even less of an idea. _

_ Maybe you knew, Abram. Maybe that was another secret that you kept from me. _

_ I don’t know anything. _

_ All that I do know is that I need to live long enough to figure out what my place is in this war. _

_ More soon, Abram. More soon. _

_ [a pause] _

_ I hope. _


	19. Prey

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter 9: Prey.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I guess it’s time to take a page from Abram’s Book of Disappearing. _

_ Soon you won’t hear from me. Not for a long time. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew hadn’t seen Lola since the farmhouse. Not in the physical sense, at least, though he could practically feel her presence at every moment he was on the move, and double so when he was stopped.

Andrew had never felt safe, really, in his life. The closest thing to safe he had probably ever felt was when he was locked in his house with Neil beside him, knowing that his husband was just as capable as defending their home as he was. He felt safe when everything that was his was in one place, safe and under his protection. 

And now?

Now every part of him was crawling, the paranoia seeping into his skin like ants in his bloodstream, burrowing into his body and crawling through his mind. Every corner he turned was his last. Every alleyway was dangerous. Every long stretch of road was too empty to be safe.

About an hour outside of Horse Cave, Kentucky, a puke-green sedan pulled into view behind Andrew. Its passenger door was a lighter shade of puke-green, its left rear view mirror hanging on with duct tape. It sat behind him on the road for a few hours, and Andrew could feel the buzzing beneath his skin stirring more with each minute. The steering wheel creaked beneath his grip as he worked himself into a panic and-

Then he looked, and the car was gone.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ How did we get from there to here? _

_ How did the dominoes fall in this direction, causing this series of events? It’s like untangling a cord at the bottom of your backpack. If you hold one end and follow it back to the beginning, maybe it can all be straightened out to the way it should be. _

_ But where would the cord end? _

_ That’s what I’m trying to figure out. _

_ Where, exactly, did this all start? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The sedan appeared again near Burnt Prairie. The sedan was driving erratically, switching from lane to lane but always staying behind Andrew, tailing him closely and then falling back again.

He lost track of it an hour later. He buried the panic that was bubbling up inside of him. He told the ants to stop buzzing through his blood. He took a breath, and carried in.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Was it when you left? _

_ No, I think, that can’t be it. Because what caused  _ that _ event? What was so important that you had to abandon your home and disappear again? What was so important that you would give up everything? _

_ Was it something I did? Did I push you to it? And if so, what was it that I did that caused the chain? _

_ Was it something else? Was it  _ someone _ else? _

_ Where does the cord start? And how did it get so tangled, to the point that it’s nearly unrecognizable? _

_ How can I straighten it all out again, Abram? _

_ How can I fix this? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The sedan came and went. Sometimes it was hours, sometimes it was days. Sometimes it sat behind Andrew for a few minutes, sometimes it followed him for miles.

And then one day he found it crashed, wrapped almost entirely around a tree on the side of the road. There was no one inside. No sign of a body, or any human contact at all.

It looked as if it had always been there, trapped in a crash that time forgot.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Nothing about this seems right. But what can I do, except keep moving? _

_ What could I ever do? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ The behavior of Fox Shipping in letting me live, and the Butchers in trying to kill me, leaves me with one conclusion: that I have an important role in this war, and it must be one that only I can do.  _

_ I’m not afraid of getting dirty, but I am getting tired of the riddles that they’re presenting. _

_ Let’s look at the facts. _

_ There is a war. To understand my role in the war, I need to understand the war itself, which I don’t.  _

_ I do understand the Butchers. They are monsters, plain and simple. They are hungry and they feed. They’re evil, and there’s no other way to look at it. But why is the US government hiding them? _

_ And then there’s Fox Shipping. Again, in one way, the motive is easily understood. There are literal monsters in the world. Any good person, given that situation, would want to fight back.  _

_ There are two sides to every coin, right? If there is evil, then somewhere, there is good, in theory.  _

_ But Fox Shipping is powerful and it is rich. Where are they getting the money and supplies to wage this war? Who is behind them? A battle of good vs. evil, fine, but I want to know who the good is.  _

_ Did you know, Abram?  _

_ Or did you proceed on faith, because you knew the other side was so monstrous? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew pulled into the Love’s near Sioux City because at this point, both he and his truck were nearly running on fumes. 

He paid for a shower after filling up his tank. Once in the stall, as he pulled his shirt over his head, there was a movement in his peripheral vision. He froze, turning his head slightly to get a better look, but there was nothing there.

Every time he turned around, in the tiny stall full of steam, he would feel someone behind him.

As the steam grew, and his vision of the walls faded away, he was left with the feeling of being alone in a vast space, surrounded by nothing. But on the other side of the vast space was a woman in a police uniform, smile splitting her face, and she was heading right for him. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw her, and he flinched, waiting for a blow that never came.

He finished his shower as quickly as humanly possible, getting changed and heading inside the gas station for a coffee.

A part of him felt safer inside, surrounded by people going about their lives, not noticing the paranoid man digging through his pockets to find change for the coffee in his hand. A majority of the others in the Love’s were truckers; they were more concerned with getting back on the road rather than worrying about the nightmare another one of their own was going through. They might not even believe it if they knew.

Andrew had been told once, by another trucker he had met at a diner on the road, that rig driving is a profession that depends on artificial energy.

“Drivers are paid by the hour,” she had said, “so every moment you don’t move is a moment you are away from the place you call home and the people you love for free. You can feel it, the itch letting you know that all of this time you’re spending - filling the gas tank, taking a shower, eating your food - is all time you’re not being compensated for.

“And so we drink coffee after coffee, letting it jitter through us as we curse traffic jams for lowering our hourly rate enough to mean the difference between being home, and being here.”

Andrew thought that it might be nice to have a home to go back to as he watched a woman in front of him in line spill an entire cup of coffee down the front of a man’s shirt. The man glared at her, and she shrugged.

“We’re truck drivers,” she said. “We’re always covered in this stuff anyway.”

The two of them stepped aside so Andrew could pay.

Back outside on his way to his truck, Andrew let his eyes scan the parking lot. His gaze fell on a woman on the other side of the gas pumps, changed out of her police uniform but still wearing her smile, her hands stuffed into her pockets as she strode toward him.

She wasn’t moving with urgency, but she was moving quick enough to send a sharp panic through Andrew’s chest. He made a beeline for his truck instead of bothering with a cigarette, climbing inside and starting his low maneuver out of the lot. As he pulled onto the road he looked in his rearview mirror and she was still there, her trajectory changed to follow his truck.

Hours later, on the road, he still felt that horrible feeling of her smile. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was still behind him, still slowly walking, never wavering in the direction of her steps.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ As long as I’m asking you questions, Abram, I wonder... Do you have any idea what it is they want me for? _

_ I really hope not, because the thought that you knew something and didn’t tell me is the most painful thought of all.  _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Two days later on the highway, Andrew noticed the truck.

It was blue, light blue, with a flame decal on the side that wrapped up toward the mirrors. It was driving erratically, swerving between lanes that had been empty of any cars for the past few miles. As it caught up to Andrew, he looked out the window and frowned at what he saw.

Covering the entire driver side window was a series of cardboard signs, all handwritten. All of them said “I NOT BAD BOY”. He couldn’t see the driver because of the coverage of the window, but it didn’t matter as it fell behind him again, out of view from the rearview mirror, and disappeared.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I wonder if at some point, when all of this is over, you and I can find a home again. _

_ I wonder if we’ll be able to fall back into our old routines. If you’ll still fill the fridge with blueberries and remember the way I like my pancakes. I wonder if you’ll start the garden you were always talking about building. Maybe we’ll adopt a cat. _

_ Or maybe things will forever be different, now. Because we have experienced a whole new kind of trauma, and with it, comes a new form of Us. _

_ There was Us Before, and now we will be Us After. _

_ If there is an after, of course. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

A day and a half later, the truck appeared again, its entire windshield plastered with the same signs as before.

I NOT BAD BOY.

It drove until it was right on Andrew’s tail, laying on the horn and tapping his bumper so hard he could feel his truck move from the force. He ignored it, continuing on, and after nearly ten minutes the truck veered off again, leaving him breathless and panicked, almost ready to stop the truck and end it all right there.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I ate lunch at a Cracker Barrel. They have a cheesecake that’s 1500 calories for a single serving. It was probably the closest thing to happy I’ve been in months. _

_ Sometimes I forget the small things. Considering I’m spending my time running fro- _

_ [a distant squealing of tires] _

_ Wha- _

_ [the sound of a door slamming] _

_ Oh shit. Oh,  _ shit _ . _

_ [static] _

_ [radio cuts off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ Two days later. I’ve been off the radio. Didn’t wanna talk again until I was closer to what I needed to be. _

_ I was sitting in my truck outside of the Cracker Barrel when Lola came tearing into the parking lot in that blue truck. Every inch of its windows plastered in those signs. “I NOT BAD BOY.” _

_ She kicked the door open, pulled herself out of the truck, and climbed onto the hood of the cab. Her chin was stained with blood, and when she saw me, she started howling.  _

_ Not like an animal, like an alarm. _

_ She locked eyes, and with no change in her expression, started a mechanical howling, over and over. _

_ I scrambled to start the cab, moving to get out of the parking lot as quickly as possible. She didn’t move to follow; she stayed on the hood of her own cab, blood dripping down her chin, coating the blue paint and running down into the flames on the side. She just stood there, howling. _

_ This wasn’t in my plan. It wasn’t anything I thought I would ever do. _

_ I’m not you, Abram. I can’t disappear the way you have. _

_ There is nowhere I can go in this country that she cannot follow. She can smell me, she said. _

_ And maybe she can. _

_ I’ve taken to filling my cab with heather, and the smell is making me a bit sick. But every little bit helps. I’d rather be less scared and more nauseous than the other way around. _

_ So here’s what I’m going to do next: I’m going to leave the country. I’m ditching the truck and leaving behind a radio. _

_ It’ll be a long time before you hear from me again. I won’t say which border. I’m leaving everything behind.  _

_ I may not be you, Abram, but I can certainly try. I’ll leave behind my identity. I’ll disappear into the cities where no one thinks twice about a stranger. _

_ My role in this war will become apparent with waiting, and it is better I wait somewhere anonymous and safe than continue to play dice with the universe looking to see me dead. _

_ You won’t hear from me, not for a long time. _

_ I have no particular plan for when I will return. Maybe it will be a few months from now but – more probably years. _

_ Abram, I believe in what you’re doing. I don’t understand it, but when the call finally comes, I will return. _

_ I’ll be a different person by the time I come back. So will you. We will be different, older people. I hope those people like each other. _

_ [sighs] _

_ Okay. Okay. _

_ [a pause] _

_ Oka- _

_ [tires screeching] _

_ [metal on metal, screaming as the sound of crushed metal carries over] _

_ [silence] _

_ [car door opening] _

_ [footsteps approaching] _

_ [Lola:] _

_ Tag, you’re it. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (:


	20. "Why Am I Alive?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of dialogue. But also a lot of answers.

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [silence, and then a voice, distant and echoed, as if in a cave] _

_ Did I know from the first time I saw you, Abram? _

_ It feels like I did. _

_ But I think our memories of these things get clouded. Maybe I didn’t think anything but “Hm, he’s cute.” _

_ That memory is so heavy with our love, it’s almost impossible for me to lift it up and inspect it for what it is. _

_ Here’s what I do remember: you were not my first, but you were close. _

_ I had this thing with this guy in high school. It wasn’t a relationship. I didn’t have the emotional capacity for that shit at the time. You know why; it isn’t fun to talk about. But I had this thing with this guy when I was trying to work through some stuff, trying to really come to terms with what was going on in my head, trying to stumble over my own identity. You know? _

_ We kept it a secret. Of course we did. Even if he hadn’t wanted to, I wouldn't have let him go around announcing it. I thought Bee for sure had no idea. Eventually, I learned that she knew and just genuinely didn’t care. But she waited for me to tell her, and waited for me to figure things out on my own. Not everything can be alright all at once,you know? _

_ Then that guy moved away and I was like oh, cool. It didn’t hurt me, didn’t make me sad. It’s just, one day he was there, and the next day he wasn’t. And I was fine with it. I didn’t want a relationship anyway. There was no point in it. Everyone was a disappointment anyway. _

_ And then, three days later, this half-starved kid with ugly brown hair and the most outdated sense of fashion showed up in my homeroom. “Neil,” the teacher had called you. You didn’t even bother to wave.  _

_ And maybe I thought nothing much, except that you were interesting, like some kind of puzzle that wasn’t quite put together right. Maybe I thought the way you watched the other students was interesting. Or the way you could nearly disappear into a crowd when you thought people were watching you too much. Or maybe it was the way you tried to be non-threatening and then beat the shit out of Jack that day in gym because he tried stealing your cash from your locker. _

_ Or maybe I just liked the way you ran your hands through your hair when you were talking about something complicated because you were pretty and I was gay. _

_ But now, in my memory, I remember thinking about my plan to stay single and looking at you, and then thinking that maybe you were a bit more of a problem than I had originally thought. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part II.**

**Chapter 10: “Why Am I Alive?”**

* * *

* * *

Andrew woke to the sound of clapping.

His mind reeled as he came to, his head throbbing and his body aching. The last he remembered, he had been running from Lola. And now he was here... Wherever “here” was.

It looked like a cave. It was small, empty except for a table and some chairs and some tools, with a single metal door on the far side of the open area. Lola leaned against it, grinning, clapping slowly to get his attention.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” she said, and Andrew squinted at her. He may have had a concussion. Everything was much too bright and much too loud. He was almost too annoyed to be panicked.

He had, after all, not expected to make it this far.

“Where am I?” he asked, and he moved to rub at his eye only to find his hands cuffed to the chair he was sitting in.

Lola hummed, folding her arms across her chest. “You’re in a location that only my coworkers know about,” she said. “We won’t be bothered. We’re going to have a little talk.”

“Why not just kill me?”

“Oh, Pumpkin, where would be the fun in that?” Lola pushed herself off of the door, crossing the room and sitting in the chair opposite Andrew. “See, this is why I wanted to talk first. Because that’s the question you’ve been asking yourself a whole lot. ‘Why am I alive? Why not kill me?’ And really, it wouldn’t exactly be satisfying for me if you died without understanding. I mean  _ really _ understanding the answer to that question.”

“You work for the Butchers,” Andrew started. Lola shrugged.

“‘Work’ sounds so... servile. You could say that I work  _ with _ them. A partnership, in a way. I’ve really only ever worked for one man, and he’s gone now. So a partnership is all this is.”

“You’re all monsters.”

Lola clicked her tongue in mock-disappointment. “Now that’s a bit melodramatic.”

“No,” Andrew said. “I mean that literally. You’re monsters. Not human. Some kind of predators, or something.”

“Oh,” Lola said. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s a bit close to the truth. A bit judgy, though. Humans can be pretty monstrous themselves, you know.”

Andrew gave Lola a flat look.

“Save your equivocating for someone you don’t have handcuffed to a chair.”

“Fair,” Lola said, shrugging again. “We love the taste of blood because it tastes like freedom. You humans, you restrict yourself far too much. We  _ have _ no restrictions. Why would I ever hold back because it could hurt someone else? Am I them? Should I care?”

“So the goal is what, then? Just to kill people?”

Lola hummed, leaning back in her chair. “That’s the question, isn’t it? You do understand that we’re at war, but you don’t understand what the war is about.”

“I understand wanting to stop you. I understand Fox Shipping wanting to end your rampage. Evil demands resistance.”

Lola pointed at Andrew as if in agreement. “Exactly. Their motivation is clear, isn’t it? But what about ours? What do we want, Andrew? And why would anyone but those who have tasted freedom want to help us? Why has the government decided to help?

Andrew was silent.

“You don’t know, do you?” Lola asked. “That’s because you’re not asking yourself the most basic question. The only one that matters.”

“What do you want?”

Lola scoffed, rolling her eyes. “No, not  _ that _ question! Who knows what we want? We’re a blank force of terror. We’re groping hands in the dark, pulling you into the shadows. We’re snatchers. Who cares what we want?”

“I don’t know then.”

“Yes, you do.”

Andrew scoffed.

“No,” Lola said. “Think about it. I want you to come to this on your own. I want you to hurt before the physical pain even begins. I want it to crush you.”

Andrew thought.

“The government is working with you,” he began.

“Yes,” Lola said, though not impatiently. “And so the question then is...?”

Andrew thought a bit more. 

“Who... benefits from this?”

Lola smiled, and Andrew felt it down his spine like fingernails.

“Who benefits from this, Andrew?”

“The government.”

“Yes!” Like a parent praising a child, Lola’s smile grew. “And why do they benefit from it?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“Oh, you were so close.” Lola waved a hand dismissively. “Nevermind, then. We’ll come back to that. Let’s look at the question you’ve been asking yourself a lot lately, instead.”

“Why am I still alive?”

“It’s a great question, Pumpkin. Really, it is. Maybe the only good question you’ve asked on your entire journey. And it’s also a question that answers itself.

“You’re still alive because you asked why you’re still alive, and I want to tell you. But first, let’s look at the answer you’ve come to yourself.”

“Fox Shipping wants me alive.”

Lola hummed. “Okay. And why is that?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew said. “I’m... important, somehow. Or, if not important, I at least have a role to fill.”

“You’re important,” Lola repeated. “You have a role. And what is that role, then?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew repeated. “I’ve been trying to figure it out but I don’t know enough about the war to understand what I have to do with it.”

Lola leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table between them, resting her chin in her hand. “It’s never wrong to say you don’t know,” she said. “It’s better to admit you don’t know than pretend you do.”

“Okay,” Andrew said. “I don’t know.”

“I just  _ love _ the conclusions you come to,” Lola said, sounding genuinely interested as she spoke. “I find them fascinating. Because you play it humble, you know? Act like you’re not worth all of this trouble.”

“I’m not,” Andrew said. “I just want to be at home with Neil.”

Lola’s grin grew sharper. “But Junior didn’t want that, did he?”

Andrew’s blood ran cold.

“Don’t call him that.”

“No, really,” Lola continued. “You say you’re only reaching the natural conclusion of everything that’s happened to you. All of these strange towns, the Butchers in your home, Fox Shipping rescuing you in Victorville. All of this, and you’re still alive. Still breathing. So you must be important, right?”

“I didn’t say important,” Andrew said. “I have a role to play.”

Lola hummed once again, tilting her head in her hands. “Allow me to present an alternative conclusion based on the same evidence. The reason you’re still alive is just because you’re not dead yet, and everyone knows it.

“You are not important, Andrew. You don’t have a role. There is no riddle to the beating of your heart, no conspiracy to the air in your lungs. You’re merely a dead man who hasn’t died yet. And I’m the one who everyone knew was coming to do it, so no one else needed to. You’ve never been anything. And soon you won’t  _ be _ at all.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ I was set on the idea of staying single, even as we started to date. I didn’t allow myself to understand what we were doing as dating.  _

_ We were friends who sometimes made out. We went on dates but weren’t dating. You were nothing, and this was nothing, and everything was fine. _

_ Being with you felt... comfortable. It was life before I knew what a life was, like a part of me that had been missing that I didn’t know I needed back. _

_ I was honest with you. _

_ “This is nothing,” I would say. “We are not in a relationship. We are nothing.”  _

_ “Sure,” you would say. “That’s fine,” you would say. “Hey, let’s drive to the mountains.” _

_ And we did drive to the mountains, and it was cold and kind of miserable, but we stayed in the car so it was fine. At a certain point, somewhere between our fifth cigarette and the sun setting low over the horizon, you turned in the passenger seat so that we were facing. And you kissed me for a long time. _

_ [a sigh]  _

_ I was completely screwed at that point. Maybe you knew it, even as I refused to admit it to myself. And for two and a half weeks, we were this... nothing. _

_ And then your mother came, and took you away. _

_ For two years I was lost, and then you came home. I’ve already told that story, though, so I won’t repeat it again. _

_ What I will say, though, is that it made me realize that our nothing was  _ something _ . I had already known, deep down before you were taken. But when you came back, all bandaged and bloody and broken, that was when I realized that I couldn’t risk losing you a second time without telling you. _

_ And so I did. And after that moment, my life was something worth living. _

_ [a pause] _

_ This all happened, Abram. I hold on to that. All of this happened, no matter what happens next. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“The reason Fox Shipping didn’t kill me,” Andrew started, “is because they already knew that you were coming to do it.”

“And?”

“And so they didn’t have to.”

Lola let out another hum.

“So close, he’s so  _ close _ . But he still can’t quite get there. Here,” she said. “Let me provide a visual aid.”

From beneath her chair Lola pulled out a document. It was huge, 23 by 36 printouts of a building - no. It was the layout of-

“The base?” Andrew looked from the paper to Lola. “We’re inside of the base?”

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

“That means that you- you work for Fox Shipping. Fox Shipping did decide to kill me. They sent you to do it.”

“Ah,” Lola said, and it sounded so satisfied that it made Andrew’s skin crawl. “Now you’ve got it. You made so many assumptions about how Bay and Creek felt about you. I don’t like people making assumptions. I needed to disabuse you of them before you died.”

Andrew took a breath.

“So both the Butchers and Fox Shipping want me dead.”

Lola leaned back in her chair. “Something like that.”

“Fuck.”

“Oh yeah,” Lola said. “It’s not a great position to be in. I wouldn’t want to switch with you.” She thought for a moment. “Of course, if I did, I would be able to get away easily... And I’d still kill you on the way out, too.” She thought a bit longer, and then nodded definitely. “Basically nothing would change. You die in all possible versions of this moment.”

“So you aren’t with the Butchers,” Andrew said. “You’re playing both sides of this war.”

Lola inspected her nails as she said, “That’s the fascinating thing about war: while having two sides is convenient, it turns out, it’s not absolutely necessary.”

The words hit Andrew like a freight train.

“Fox Shipping and the Butchers,” Andrew said. “They’re working together.”

Lola smiled. “You see, you haven’t even understood the basic shape of the conflict. Fox Shipping and the Butchers can’t work together, because there  _ is _ no FoxShipping and no Butchers. There is only one side to this war.

“Where did you think the funding for a place like this comes from?”

Andrew tasted sand.

“Who could match the spending of the US government?”

Lola pointed at him again. “Bingo. The answer to that is the same government. The Butchers and Fox Shipping are actors in a show.

“See, war is a very useful thing, Andrew. It allows for a lot of messiness, a lot of freedom. And we are a country that enjoys messiness and freedom.”

“Fox Shipping and the Butchers fake a secret conflict.”

“Forever and ever,” Lola said. “We act out our parts. We make it a living. But don’t forget the original question.”

“Who benefits from this?”

“There you go! There’s a lot of good work you can hide in the carnage of a war. It provides cover for all sorts of things.”

Andrew’s stomach sank. “And Neil?”

Lola let out a laugh. “Did the love of your life know? How ultimate is this betrayal? Oh, Andrew. I wish I could rub it in, but I like to be honest about my work and really? I just don’t know.”

She shrugged. “Most people involved in Fox Shipping genuinely  _ do _ think they are stopping terrible monsters that lurk on the backways of this country. Otherwise it would, you know, be a pretty hard secret to keep. Junior really probably did think he was helping save the world.

“But Andrew, I want you to understand that I am being perfectly honest here. Because I really,  _ really _ want you to feel the full brunt of the pain from this. He could well have known. A lot of people also do. Otherwise it would be a pretty hard charade to maintain.”

“I know Neil,” Andrew said.

“I would say, again if we’re being honest with ourselves, that maybe you don’t know much of anything, at all.”

“And what about Palmetto?” Andrew asked. “How do they fit into your war?”

Lola frowned. “What do you know about Palmetto?”

Now it was Andrew’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know if it’s something that can be known.”

Lola let out a low whistle. “That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day. Probably the smartest thing you’ve ever said in your waning life. Don’t worry about them. I have so many other things for you to worry about instead.”

She stood, stretching her arms over her head and yawning dramatically.

“I’m getting tired of talking. I got what I wanted, I saw you learn the truth and it wasn’t even as good as I wanted it to be. So – I’ve got places to be. Let’s get started.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ After graduating, you and I lived in a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Columbia. The apartment was basically a kitchen. We had a bed barely big enough for the two of us. It was the only furniture we had, and so we spent all day in it. We slept, ate, talked, all on the cheapest mattress a small amount of money could buy.  _

_ When we finally got rid of the mattress, the guy who collected it said that it sagged more than any mattress he had ever seen. There was a room with the toilet on one side of the kitchen, and a room with a sink and a shower on the complete other side of the kitchen. It was a shitty place to live, but it was ours, and we were content. _

_ Moving in together wasn’t easy. There was discomfort. Two people with two lives figuring out how to adjust the size of their traumas and shrink their lives to fit a tiny bed in the corner of a kitchen. But slowly, we realized that it wasn’t a constriction, but a rearrangement of terms. _

_ There was infinite space in that tiny apartment, if we reoriented ourselves to find it. _

_ Soon we settled into this new way of living, and the two of us became a unit. It was the first step to having a life together. _

_ But the realization that this life could be indefinite, that it could have the same length as the lives of our physical bodies? That didn’t come until the death of your father. _

_ The prison had called in the morning. By the late evening, you still hadn’t moved from our bed. You had said you were in shock, like your head didn’t feel quite attached to your body. _

_ We laid facing each other. Neither of us moved. _

_ But I remember the sunlight on your face, and I remember the way you said, “I could spend my life with you.”  _

_ And I said, “That would be nice.” _

_ We wouldn’t get married for another few years, but that was the moment that the possibility of forever laid itself out for us. At least that’s what I thought. _

_ I never foresaw this room, this room I will die in. _

_ I’ll never again see that man who laughed as he made me pancakes, who kissed me from the passenger seat of my car up in the middle of the mountains. Who took my hand and walked with me into the rest of our lives. _

_ You were more of a problem than you were worth. _

_ I love you. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew watched as Lola ran a hand over the tools on the table.

“Here we go,” she said, picking up a pair of needle-nose pliers. “This won’t feel very good.”

“I have done nothing but survive my entire life,” Andrew said. “I can survive you.”

Lola smiled. “Andrew, baby, I promise, you can’t. It’s okay. Come here.”

Andrew’s mind was moving a mile a minute. How could he get out -- how could he run? How could he survive this? He had to survive this. His blood was pounding in his ears. It sounded like banging on a door.

“It’s happening now,” Lola said softly, making her way around the table. “Can you pinpoint the moment you start to die?”

Andrew’s breathing grew ragged. He pushed himself backward in the chair as far as he could go. The pounding in his ears grew louder. It echoed through the cave. Lola looked over her shoulder.

“One second,” she called. “Finishing up here!”

The banging wasn’t in his head.

Someone was pounding on the door.

Lola ignored it, moving forward another step. The banging grew louder. Louder, and louder, and finally, the door burst open.

There was a flurry of movement, Lola whirling around, furious, before the sound of gunshots rang out, nearly deafening in the small space. Lola fell to the ground, unmoving.

There, in the doorway, holding a gun and looking nearly as panicked as Andrew felt, was Neil.

It was silent for a long time. And then Andrew spoke.

“Abram?”

Neil looked up, snapping his gaze from a crumpled Lola to Andrew. He lowered his gun, looking almost... broken.

“I was wrong,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m… Will you come with me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -end part II-


	21. Cause and Effect

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ You always told me that you wouldn't run. You promised. You told me that you were done running, and that you were going to stay. _

_ But one day I came home, and you were gone. _

_ "The only consistency in life is inconsistency," Bee always said. "It is important to remember that there are elements in life that we cannot control. The choices of other people, the consequences of our actions, the detours we are forced to make. There will be places you thought you would never end up, and places you will never return to. Some things are out of your hands, Andrew, and you will learn with time how to accept this.” _

_ And I did learn, like Bee said I would. I understood. I accepted what I could not control. _

_ I accepted the things in my life I had no choice in. _

_ "Don't come looking," you had said when you left. _

_ I cannot control other people. _

_ But they cannot control me. _

_ I went looking, Abram. And I found you. _

_ [a pause] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ And now I sit here next to you in this truck, day after day and week after week. _

_ You are the only person I was not afraid to let find me. _

_ It is not the same between us. Not yet. And I can understand why. But I am willing to wait it out until I’ve made it right. _

_ I hope all of what we’ve been through will be worth it. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Nothing ever could be. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter I: Cause and Effect.**

* * *

* * *

They stood side-by-side in Arizona, staring out at the Amazing Painted Rocks - two exclamation points. Andrew doubted it had been very impressive when it was first opened but now, after years of abandonment, it was even sadder than it had probably ever been. 

He looked at Neil beside him. It was still strange to have him there after years of not. Even though it had been months, now, since he had saved Andrew from Lola and climbed up beside him in the cab of his truck. Even though it had felt like a piece of him sliding back into place, but still slightly... wrong. Like a reattached limb that was three inches too short.

It was like coming home, but finding it painted an entirely different color.

He was angry, but also not.

He was happy, but also not.

He was scared, but also not.

He ignored all of this, watching instead the way that Neil looked at the view around him. He watched the way that Neil’s color drained from his face, the way that he glanced at the empty ticket booths that held no one but a family of lizards as if an ambush were waiting for him in this abandoned place.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Neil said. “It’s fine. I’ve been here before. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Andrew scoffed. “Of course you don’t,” he said.

Of course he didn’t.

Still, he didn’t push Neil to talk. He didn’t care. He had more important things to worry about than a man having a silent crisis in an abandoned road-side parking lot.

Instead, he did a lap around the place. There wasn’t anything to it. An empty parking lot, cracked and bleeding with weeds and flowers reclaiming the space that was once there. The empty ticket booth and the now-peeling painted rocks. The bathrooms, still, surprisingly, pretty clean.

He didn’t look too closely. He knew there was something hidden in this place, but he didn’t need to find it.

It wouldn’t matter by the time they were finished.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ We’ve left Arizona now. The job is done. I have to get out of this state, now. _

_ We’re going to the coast, which isn’t much better, but necessary for what we need to do. I’ll live.  _

_ [a pause] _

_ [quieter] _

_ I’ll live. _

_ On the 101, south of Santa Barbra, there are oil rigs out on the water. They look like giants from a monster movie, stepping out of the depths. _

_ [silence] _

_ [a pause] _

_ There was so much hidden at the Amazing Painted Rocks, two exclamation points. _

_ There was a lot physically hidden, but there was also a story there, buried beneath the rocks, that I wasn’t ready to tell yet. _

_ How am I supposed to explain the way my stomach dropped through the floor when I first stepped out of the cab? He hadn’t told me where we were going. He didn’t think it mattered. And honestly, it shouldn’t have mattered. _

_ But how could he have possibly known that if my story had a first sentence, then that first sentence started there? _

_ My secret is buried there, now, along with whatever else they’ve put into the Earth. And it will have to stay hidden. We have a job to do, and not a lot of time to do it. _

_ Like Andrew says, a man can only have so many issues. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

They pulled everything from the trailer as carefully as possible. They’d been careful with everything, because Andrew was a firm believer in the fact that once you got too confident in your methods, that’s when you slip up. And so he and Neil took nothing for granted.

They checked for possible tripping hazards before each step. They split up, moving through the place, laying down the materials throughout. They were silent as they worked. There was some pointing, or occasional facial expressions indicating “yes” or “no” or “how the fuck should I know, figure it out on your own.”

Andrew wasn’t sure it would make a difference if they had talked. But they didn’t.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

So _ uth of Santa Barbara is the town of La Conchita, tucked between the highway and the hillside. Which is, in California, a dangerous place to be. Landslides have been reported here for well over a century. It might be that this stretch of land was cleared out specifically to put some distance between the hills and the railroad tracks. And yet people filled that margin with houses. And then a town. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ The first major landslide of modern times happened in 1995. The town was declared a geological hazard area. Everyone knew it was going to happen again, but they stayed. Then in 2005, even more of the hillside collapsed, killing ten people. A report from the US government said that, quote, “no part of the community can be considered safe from landslides”. And yet, La Conchita still has a population of over 300. _

_ [Andrew:]  _

_ I shouldn’t judge. No one should. _

_ We all do lots of things we shouldn’t. It’s hard to walk away from something you put your whole life into, even if you know it may end up killing you. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Once everything was in place, they went through and double-checked. They didn’t have much time, but there wasn’t much point in doing this if they didn’t do it right. So they cross-checked each other’s work, and then a second time, and then a third. And then they went back to the truck, climbed into the cab, and drove out of the parking lot. Far enough to be safe, but close enough to see the results of their work.

They parked the truck, pulled out a cell phone they had bought at a gas station two states away, and pressed the call button.

Then, The Amazing Painted Rocks, two exclamation points and all, blew up.

Anything that had still been standing was no longer doing so, and Andrew and Neil watched as bits of rock and porcelain and ticket booth rained down in fragments from the sky.

They watched for a minute, allowing themselves the satisfaction of a successful job, and then they got out of there before someone from the highway noticed and tried to figure out which authority you call about a bunch of rocks blowing up in the middle of nowhere.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Walking along the beach in Santa Barbara, there’s two old men sitting on a wall between the sidewalk and the sand. One lights a cigarette and the other one says, “Those cause cancer,” and the smoker says: “Cigarettes don’t cause cancer, people cause cancer.” And then he laughs for a long, long time. _

_ I buy a smoothie with whey protein in it half a block away and drink it with my feet in the sand, looking out at the water. _

_ Beaches still hurt, sometimes. They still make me nervous, sometimes. They still smell like smoke and burning flesh and sound like cracking metal and blood sticking to vinyl. But I am doing what needs to be done. _

_ I am with Andrew, again, and I will not let my ghosts ruin things. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ I miss home. But home isn’t a place, home is a person. I want to go home, but I am home. _

_ Home is here, with you. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Sometimes folks on TV call us the Derelict Bombers, but mostly they don’t know what to say about us. _

_ What kind of message are we spending by bombing empty buildings and abandoned roadside stops? We’ve never even come close to hurting a person, and all the places we blow up, no one is even clear who owns them, having been so long since anyone did anything with them. _

_ [a laugh] _

_ We don’t worry about what the journalists think we’re doing. The message is not for them. _

_ [a pause] _

_ It’s been five months since I pulled Andrew out of that underground base. Five months of living like this. Parking the truck far from the highway behind trees and brush. Living always as wanted people. Never turning our faces fully to a stranger. _

_ I’m accustomed to this way of living. It's been ingrained in me since I was a child. I can survive for decades like this... Not living, but surviving. Day to day, month to month, outrunning those that would like to see me dead. _

_ But can he? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [a pause] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ We found each other. We’re both here. _

_ I know Neil is questioning whether I can do this. I can see it in his face every time he looks at me. The way the little gears in his nearly-empty head spin trying to piece together whether or not I hate him for making me live this way. _

_ I’m not concerned about that. I’m concerned about what’s next. _

_ And what’s next?  _

_ Now we turn to open war. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

It had taken them a couple of months to learn enough and to gather the materials so that they felt they could actually pull off the bombings.

There was a lot of Googling from public libraries and looking up formulas in physical books so that they wouldn’t accidentally blow themselves up in the process. And then, once they felt confident enough in their crafting, they blew up their first Fox Shipping base.

Neil had discovered, long before Andrew had found him, that Fox Shipping had these bases everywhere. And once you knew what you were looking for, they were relatively easy to find. They were in the abandoned places near a highway, with murky ownership leading through shell company after shell company.

Buried there, in the abandoned spaces on the outskirts of places people bother to look, are hidden switches that lead to Fox Shipping. But they didn’t even need to find it, really.

They could just blow the whole thing up.

They were not devastating attacks, they knew, but the goal was not devastation; it was causing trouble until they could figure out their next move.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ I can tell Andrew is growing restless. _

_ He doesn’t think it’s enough anymore. I mean, he’s right, isn’t he? It’s not enough just to annoy them. _

_ “We’re not like mosquitos,” he says. _

_ “Mosquitos kill over a million people a year,” I point out, but he just scoffs. _

_ “We’re not giving them malaria,” he says. _

_ “Maybe we should consider doing that,” I say. _

_ I laugh. He doesn’t. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ We don’t have malaria. What we have is information. _

_ We know about Fox Shipping, and we know about the Butchers and the US Government. We need to get that information out into the world. All of these journalists wondering what the Derelict Bombers are about. _

_ The message isn’t for them, but maybe it should be. _

_ I didn’t want to involve anyone when I left Columbia. I cut off contact for a reason. I left, and I didn’t look back. My family played no part in this, and I wasn’t looking to have them involved now. _

_ But there is one person in my family that I know can handle herself. _

_ And so I called Renee. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [static, silence] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Causality is a tricky thing. _

_ Cigarettes don’t cause cancer. People don’t cause cancer. _

_ It is the intersection of the two which makes cancer happen. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

In a field in Nebraska, a man walks out along the grass. 

There is something wrong with how he’s walking; a limp? Only, it is not regular enough to be a limp. His walk is wobbly and wet, like he is shifting himself along on piles of mud. 

As he grows closer to where he needs to be, there is a huff and snort in his breath. His skin hangs loose on his face. His eyes are yellow around the pupils. His teeth are yellow, too. 

He wears a black hat with blood-red lettering. The front of the hat reads BUTCHER. 

He is greeted by a group of men just like him. Boogeymen out of nightmares. Hundreds of them, together in this remote field. They were scattered out into the highways when their town near Victorville had been discovered. But they then slowly made their way to this place, picking off innocent people as they went.

Traces of blood leading to a point on a map. And here at this point, they gather.

A final person joins the group.

He does not look like the rest of them. He wears a Fox Shipping uniform, though instead of the orange and white coloring of their company logo, his was the same red and black of the Butchers. 

He is smaller than the others, but he carries himself as if he towers over them all.

He has a 1 tattooed on his cheekbone.

His name is Riko.

Once, he had let Andrew believe he had been rescued from the Butchers’ Town. Once, he had let Kevin Day run from him to find safe-haven with his father in the one place he couldn’t reach. Once, he had found Neil Josten at The Amazing Painted Rocks. Once, he had been human himself.

Now he looks over this group of serial killing monsters, and he smiles and says, “Okay. Let’s get started, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we're cookin' with gas (-:


	22. Surroundings

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ The highway is miles back. The ground here is flat until the horizon. Nothing but dust and dirt as far as you can see. There is a single Airstream trailer here, in the middle of this nowhere. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ We’re far enough from the border that whoever, or whatever, lives in there wouldn’t get hassled so much by jackboots. _

_ I doubt anyone passes through here unless they’re seriously lost, or looking to get that way. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ West Texas doesn’t exactly fuck around when it comes to concepts like “hot” and “lonely”. This is a land that is overly hostile for living. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ And yet, here we are, and here’s this Airstream, the only thing blinding you for miles, like a diamond on a dirt road to nowhere. Whoever or whatever we’re looking for? _

_ They’re in there. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Because there are oracles on these roads. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ [a pause] _

_ We hope. _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter II:** **Surroundings.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [static] _

_ [Neil, singing off-key:] _

_ It’s gonna take a lot to drag me awaaaay from you! _

_ There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever doooo! _

_ I bless the rains down in Aaaaafrica! _

_ Gonna take some time to do the things we never haaaaaaaaad! _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ I’m going to push you out of the cab- _

_ [Neil, singing louder:] _

_ GONNA TAKE SOME TIME TO DO THE THINGS WE NEV- _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

There was a name that had come up over and over in both Andrew and Neil’s journeys.

Palmetto.

They knew almost nothing about them, except that they stood against both Fox Shipping and the Butchers. So, to search for more information, they did what anyone would do.

They Googled them.

There wasn’t much, predictably.

Then they did what more people should do, and they asked a librarian. A nice woman named Abby outside of Tulsa. She looked through a catalogue, found references throughout historical texts. And as long as America as a concept had existed, there were peripheral mentions of both Palmetto and Butchers.

Though finding them was something else entirely.

Andrew took Neil back to a bay in Delaware, where a factory had once stood. The name of the factory had been Palmetto, and there was no way that they could just make an entire factory disappear.

Except that, apparently, they could.

The bay was empty. There was no sign of any structure having been there. Andrew double-checked the route, made sure he was on the right stretch of coast. But, it made sense. There was no way a factory could have ever been there. Who builds a factory on the sand, stretching it out into the sea?

Except, Andrew remembered it. Andrew remembered Palmetto. Remembered Seth.

So where had it gone?

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Being good at long distance travel means turning yourself as much as possible into cargo. The more you can become like, say, a cardboard box, the better you are at withstanding the miles. _

_ A cardboard box doesn’t need to pee. A cardboard box doesn’t need to stretch its legs. A cardboard box only sits and is transported.  _

_ And that is how a person becomes good at long road trips. They sit and are transported. They take the world as it comes. A road trip is often seen as an exercise in freedom, but the effect it has on a person is a placating stillness. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ I was raised on long distance travel. _

_ It was mostly memories of fear and anxiety. Of becoming cargo to be transported. _

_ “Speak when spoken to,” as they say. “Children should be seen and not heard.” _

_ Only on this trip, the children should not have been seen, either. _

_ It takes you out of yourself. There’s another saying.  _

_ “Wherever you go, there you are.” _

_ And it’s true, there’s no destination far enough that your own faults won’t follow.  _

_ But what I think what that saying misses is that other cliché: “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” _

_ Because while it’s you who leaves a place, and you who arrives in a place, it isn’t necessarily you in between. _

_ The You who sits on the road is a different You. One whose choices have been narrowed down to which exit to stop at, what music to listen to for the next 100 miles, what motel or corner of the highway you will be sleeping at.  _

_ It’s both freeing and terrifying, being taken out of yourself and replaced by this road version. Sometimes the less options we have, the more free and, simultaneously, trapped we feel. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ This permanent road trip has changed the way that time moves. _

_ It used to be that an hour and a half drive felt significant. Not like a long time, or anything, since Neil and I would drive regularly on weekends, just going for miles and miles. But it felt... like time had passed. Like there was a start point and an end point. The clock had moved at the rate it normally does. _

_ Now, though, six or seven hours feel like one. Like you got in your car, drove, and you got out ten minutes later hundreds of miles from where you were. _

_ I’ve learned that all it takes is sitting and existing. _

_ Exist long enough and anything will pass. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

They heard it again and again, whispered by folks three drinks deep in roadside bars and buried in the footnotes of peer-reviewed papers. 

Oracles. 

_There are_ _oracles on these roads_, they would say. 

The one consistency they could find was this:

Where there was activity from Palmetto, an oracle wouldn’t be far behind.

Messengers, Andrew assumed. Some kind of physical embodiment of the corporation.

Whatever they were, Andrew and Neil were determined to hunt one down.

It was said that they lived in roadside places. The bathrooms at a gas station, commuter parking lots and behind highway fast food franchises. They put word out through Neil’s shifty underground network: they were looking for an oracle. 

They backtracked through all of the locations where Andrew and Robin met Kevin and Wymack and their traveling restaurant. The one called Palmetto. The locations, though, were still empty. Chairs stacked on dusty tables, the thin haze of abandonment littered throughout the space. Andrew ran his fingers across the glass at the last location they found. It was cold, and his hand came back with a thin layer of dirt covering his fingers.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ We still haven’t talked about why I left. _

_ I don’t know how to tell him the story without reopening the wound. So we talk about other things. _

_ Sometimes, we just don’t talk at all. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ He’ll tell me eventually. He always does. _

_ For a runaway, he is remarkably bad at keeping secrets. _

_ Until he does tell me, though, I have enough to keep my busy. _

_ He is here, and for now, that is enough. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Word came back faster than Andrew had expected it to.

They were told that the source may have been Robin which, according to Neil, was news to him, as five months ago no one named Robin was involved with his contacts. Andrew was impressed at how quickly she had integrated in.

It was Allison from New York who called Neil.

“Can’t promise it came from Robin,” she said, though the tone of her voice suggested that she was, in fact, promising. “You know how unreliable info can be when it comes from a game of Telephone.”

Her voice shifted, and Andrew watched Neil’s face contort into something like sadness.

“Be safe, kid. If you’re on the same path as Robin, and you’re doing what I think you’re doing, then be careful. You know Matt will kill you if you die.”

“I’m fine,” Neil said, and Allison let out a laugh on the other end of the line.

“You just won me thirty bucks, babe,” she said. “I can always count on you.”

They discussed the risks of going, but there wasn’t much they could do about them. 

And so they went to Texas.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ One aspect of road trips has changed dramatically over the years. _

_ It used to be that if you saw some seedy place off the side of the road, you either had to stop to investigate it yourself or choose to keep driving. Did you want to risk food poisoning from some nowhere back town diner? Or would it be the best thing you’ve ever eaten, only to be lost to your memory and the highway, never to be found again? _

_ Now, though, you can look up online reviews of literally anything. _

_ You can see pictures of the food. Read about the interactions that others had with the staff. What looks like a nowhere back town diner turns out to be a legendary food joint that some people drive three states over just to try. _

_ There are many things hiding in the corners of these roads. All you have to do is look for them. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew called Renee outside of a truck stop off the Texas highway.

“Hello again Andrew,” she said upon answering, and Andrew bit back the relief that came with hearing her voice. “I trust you’re okay?”

“Of course I am,” he said, and he could practically hear her smile on the other end of the line. “I trust you are, as well.”

“Things are quiet here,” she confirmed. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“I’d hope so,” he said. “I have some information that Stephanie might be interested in.”

Renee hummed. “I’m actually taking the project on myself,” she said. Andrew raised an eyebrow. “I know the look you’re giving me right now, Andrew, and it will not change anything.

“This is not something that I want you involved in.”

“And Stephanie as a casualty is okay?”

“That is not what I said.”

“But it is what you meant.”

The line grew quiet. He knew that she didn’t hold it against him, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

“I just mean that if it’s Stephanie, she has no connections to me or Neil. She will be harder to trace than you would be.”

“With all of the power at their disposal, I can tell you that the layer of security would be no different.”

Andrew grew quiet again.

“What have you gathered for me today?” Renee asked, and Andrew sighed and began his report.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ The highway is miles back. The ground here is flat until the horizon. Nothing but dust and dirt as far as you can see. There is a single Airstream trailer here, in the middle of this nowhere. _

_ Here waits our oracle. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ On one hand, it almost seems ridiculous to me that an oracle would live in an Airstream. But also, I can’t think of a more appropriate place for an oracle to be. I admire their taste. _

* * *

They left the truck. It wasn’t designed for off-roading. Andrew had considered walking, but Neil pointed out that while the temperature was walkable at the time being, it would not be so by mid-day. So they rented a four-wheel drive.

Before climbing out of the car, Neil spoke.

“I’m ready to tell you.”

Andrew paused, one hand on the door handle, and gave Neil a flat look.

“Really,” he said, “now?”

“I don’t know,” Neil said. “I think I just... can’t do another stupid thing without explaining it all to you.”

Andrew didn’t move for a moment, thinking. And then he slid back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest and nodding at Neil.

“Fine,” he said. “Tell me.”

And Neil did.

* * *

“Andrew-”

Neil was cut off by the driver’s side door slamming shut. Andrew made his way around the front of the truck, ignoring Neil as he scrambled out of the passenger side and jogged to keep up.

“Andrew-”

He cut Neil off again by pulling open the door of the Airstream and stepping inside.

It was wood-paneled inside. There was a record player in one corner, surrounded by scattered records. They were wet, somehow, and warped. Andrew wondered how they had gotten wet in a place that never rains.

Neil, seeming to have the same line of thought, tried the kitchen sink. There was no water. This wasn’t surprising. What would it be attached to?

Andrew looked beyond the sink to the bed.

There sat a person in a grey hoodie. Their face was lost in the shadow of it, but looking at them now, Andrew thought that he might be able to get as close as he wanted to that hood, and he would never see a face.

He moved across the trailer slowly, as if confronting a wild animal. He made his way to the bed, sitting slowly, but the oracle didn’t move even as the bed sagged as he sat.

A cloud passed over the sun. The trailer grew dim.

“We’ve gone through a lot to find you,” Andrew said. The oracle said nothing back.

Neil looked out the sunroof of the Airstream. There were no clouds in the sky.

“Hello?” Andrew asked, and then felt a bit stupid. The oracle at the rest stop had no problem talking to him. Something very  _ wrong _ settled into his stomach.

He reached out and touched the oracle.

They slumped backwards.

The oracle was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [pretends to be shocked meme]


	23. Means of Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a monster and I really love it

_ [Neil:] _

_ A cloud passes over the sun. It gets dim in the trailer. _

_ [Andrew:]  _

_ “We’ve come a long way to talk to you,” I say. They say nothing back. _

_ [Neil:]  _

_ But there were no clouds in the sky. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ “Hello?” I say. Silly. If they wanted to respond, they would. _

_ I reach out, hesitant but knowing what I need to do. I touch them. They slump backwards. The Oracle is dead. _

_ [Neil:]  _

_ From outside, I hear a wet huffing and whooping. I don’t even have to look out the window to know… _

_ [Andrew:]  _

_ The trailer is surrounded by Butchers. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter 3: Means of Escape**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ I’m not sure, exactly, where my trip started. I’m not sure what counts as the first moment. _

_ So, for lack of a better answer, I’ll say that it started with the Amazing Painted Rocks. _

_[a pause]_

_ Before this all started, I was in marketing. _

_ I know. I lead this fucked up life, come back scarred and mangled and mentally driven into the ground, and I put myself back together to get into... A desk job. _

_ It was perfect. _

_ It was safe. _

_ So I’m coming back from a business meeting in northern Arizona and I stop off at the Amazing Painted Rocks, two exclamation points. I needed to pee, and it looked slightly more interesting than a fast food joint. And as I was coming back from the restroom, I decided to look at the rocks. I mean... I’m already there, so why not? _

_ I stopped at a lot of stupid roadside attractions when I was on the run. It’s not like I ever got to look. _

_ They were... better than when Andrew and I saw them. I paused there because “better” is a generous term to use. They were rocks. They were painted. It was something I very much enjoyed. _

_ As I stood there, though, I noticed movement above the rocks. It looked like a person thrashing around. Like they were choking, maybe, or having a heart attack. And then I noticed that it wasn’t one person, but two. A man attacking another man. _

_ I have terrible anxiety. After years of running, of changing my name and keeping my head down and being taught that getting involved in other people’s problems will be what kills you, it takes a bit of a toll. My mom would kill me if she knew what I decided to do that day, but honestly? Sometimes your nature wins out over your common sense. _

_ I ran up the hill. I don’t really know why, but my legs moved on their own, coming to the defense of the person being attacked. _

_ The attacker’s skin was sagging and his teeth were sharp. He was strong. His hat read BUTCHER. _

_ I had misunderstood my abilities in this situation. That isn’t uncommon; I usually do. Andrew tends to yell at me about that a lot. _

_ But the other man that was being attacked got to his feet and together we fought the attacker off. He pulled a knife from his belt and stabbed the man through the throat. He gurgled, leaked yellow pus, and fell to the ground. _

_ Killing is not new to me. It hasn’t been since my father’s assistant shoved a knife into my hand and taught me how to carve a pig while it was still breathing. It hasn’t been since my mother forced a gun into my hands and told me that if I did not use it, it would be me on the ground instead of the men chasing us. _

_ This doesn’t mean that I enjoy it. _

_ As I stood there, though, watching the man-- no, the monster-- bleed yellow all over the rocks, the other man didn’t even look at the body. He only looked at me. _

_ “My name is Riko,” he said. He had a one tattooed on his cheekbone. He was smaller than I am, and he was smiling the same kind of smile that was worn by people like my father. “Most people wouldn’t have done what you just did. We could use someone like you. How would you like a job?” _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew stood from the bed at the same time the Butchers began pushing at the trailer. Their hands made soft putty noises, like wet mud being thrown at a metal wall. The trailer swayed back and forth, as if they were cow tipping for fun before they decided to slaughter it for the meat.

The body of the Oracle they had come to see fell sideways off of the mattress and onto the floor. Andrew took a step toward them, but stopped. What was the point? They were gone. And soon he would be too, if he didn’t do something now.

There were howls and huffs of excitement outside. The Butchers were getting restless.

Andrew took three long strides across the trailer, grabbing Neil’s wrist and moving toward the door. He stopped before opening it, glancing back at the body of the Oracle.

They were still limp, slumped over on the floor, but simultaneously there was another Oracle, alive, standing over their own body. Their hollow hooded face stared at Andrew.

“ **I’m already dead,** ” they called. “ **Run.** ”

And then there was only the body, left slumped and alone on the floor of an Airstream trailer.

For a moment in his mind, Andrew saw a black boat floating forever at the mouth of a river. And then he blinked, turning back to the door and pulling Neil with him out of the trailer. There were at least 20 Butchers outside, and they cheered when the two of them entered the harsh sunlight. Andrew concentrated on a gap in their ranks and made for the SUV.

He hadn’t taken ten steps, though, before realizing that the SUV had been disabled. The tires were slashed, and the steering wheel sat in the passenger seat. Andrew thought, briefly, that he hadn’t opted for the insurance.

The exhaustion of his despair mixed with an adrenaline jolt of fear. They were cornered.

Behind them, the Butchers made a slushed sound of glee.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ The job in marketing was perfect. _

_ The job in marketing was safe. _

_ I quit a week after Riko offered me a position with his company, and I never looked back. _

_ If there were monsters in this world, different from the kind that I had known my entire life, then I couldn’t pretend that everything was fine. I have Andrew, and I wanted to protect him. I wanted to keep him safe. _

_ When I have the skillset capable of protecting the ones I love, why wouldn’t I utilize it? _

_ [a pause] _

_ It was torture hiding it from Andrew. _

_ I had promised not to run. But, technically, I wasn’t running. I had already been going on regular business trips. I kept the same schedule, but instead of attending marketing meetings, Riko and I hunted down Butchers. _

_ When we weren’t working, we trained. _

_ Hand to hand combat, first aid, target shooting, basic tactics. The things that I had grown up doing were re-taught to me in a new context. Instead of causing harm, I was using these things to help. I learned the tedious step by step of detective work. _

_ But most of all, Riko trained me to trust him. _

_ We worked with a guy named Kevin. He had been there long before I had, and had practically grown up alongside Riko and his uncle. He was second in command, and he was the vital part of my training. _

_ “You don’t question him,” Kevin had said. “You do what he says, when he says it. He will protect you. This organization will keep you safe.” _

_ It was the murder of Bernard Hamilton that sealed it for me. We were looking over the body, the three of us, when I was struck with a thought. _

_ “This is normal,” my mind said. “This is another day on a job.” _

_ I didn’t recognize myself for a while. When I looked into the mirror, it was my father that stared back at me. The first Butcher I knew. The first monster that I ever met. _

_ “How can I keep hunting them,” I asked myself, “when one is in the mirror looking back at me?” _

_ I pushed the thoughts aside. Surely if I were a monster Riko would turn the knife on me instead. I didn’t let my anxiety show. I kept doing my job. _

_ I did my job for many years, even, and might have kept that way forever, if need be. _

_ And then Kevin escaped, and my double life became untenable. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The Butchers fell upon them quickly. They kicked and pushed at them, pulling each other along, staying just ahead of their grasping hands.

Then, a few hundred yards away, Andrew spotted an old 90’s model sedan. The tires were low, and it looked like it barely ran. It had to have been one of the cars the Butchers came in. They made it to the car, and the keys were still in the ignition. Andrew thought, for a moment, that monsters should take better care to trap their prey. And then he was immediately thankful that they didn’t. They scrambled into the seats, and Andrew started the car.

“This is an all-wheel-drive,” he said. “How did they even get this out here?”

It was rhetorical, and Neil knew it, and Andrew was grateful that he kept his mouth shut. He did his best to steer it around any holes or patches of heavy sand that would get the wheels caught, and pointed the car in the direction of the highway.

Once they were a mile out, he felt like he could breathe again.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, and Neil let out a large sigh from next to him.

“At least we’re safe,” he said, and Andrew nearly punched him in the shoulder for jinxing them the exact same moment the car hit a hole he hadn’t seen and stopped dead.

He tried to start it, but it was done.

The car was done.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ Names are a funny thing. _

_ Sometimes they can hold a lot of power. Owners of empires and serial killers and celebrities. You throw a name out, and it has a power behind it that can be used to your benefit. _

_ Sometimes, though, names can hold power over  _ you _ . _

_ I had been working for Fox Shipping for a few years when Kevin left. _

_ I was at one of the bases on an overnight stay as we searched for a Butcher. That night, Kevin came into my room and sat at the edge of my bed. He was quiet for a very long time. _

_ “What do you know about Fox Shipping?” He asked. I raised an eyebrow at him. _

_ “A lot,” I said. “Enough.” _

_ “Is it?” He said. “Really?” _

_ “I guess,” I said. “Why?” _

_ Kevin was quiet again. And then he spoke. _

_ “They know who you are, Nathaniel.” _

_ [silence] _

_ [a breath] _

_ See, names are a funny thing. _

_ They can hold a lot of power over you. _

_ Hearing him call me that name took every ounce of breath from my lungs. I felt like I was falling, like I had been pushed from a peak higher than my body could handle. _

_ “How do you know that name?” I asked. Kevin looked away. _

_ “Do you ever wonder who is funding this?” _

_ I frowned. “Who?” _

_ “You would not believe me if I told you.” _

_ “Try me.” _

_ Kevin looked back at me. _

_ “Have you ever asked Riko what his last name was?” _

_ I frowned. Of course I knew Riko’s last name. You don’t work for an organization for years without knowing the full name of the person you work under. _

_ I thought... But I couldn’t remember. _

_ “Do you wonder who the Butchers got their name from?” Kevin asked before I could answer his last question. “Do you wonder what we’re doing, fighting an endless war that we cannot win?” _

_ “I don’t understa-” _

_ “Have you met Lola yet?” _

_ The wind had been knocked from my lungs before, but this name crushed them completely. _

_ Kevin searched the expression on my face for a long time and, seeming satisfied with what he saw, stood and walked to the door. Once it was open, he paused in the doorway. _

_ “Let Riko know that I’ve found Palmetto,” he said, and then he was gone. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

They had been walking for almost two hours without sight of a highway. Andrew was nearly losing his sense of direction with nothing but desert surrounding them on all sides. For all he knew, they were heading further into the wasteland, and further into the heat. They could barely breathe, and thirst scraped their throats dry. They could hear the wet whooping and whistling of Butchers surrounding them. They couldn’t tell the distance; they could be a mile away or ten feet behind. 

And then, suddenly, a light on the horizon.

It glinted like a piece of metal in the sun, and that made Andrew realize that it  _ was _ a piece of metal in the sun. He turned to Neil, who was already moving in the direction of the object.

“A car,” he said. “Andrew, thank God you saw that.”

Andrew nodded, and they continued on, picking up speed with newfound hope.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ Riko, of course, was furious. _

_ Kevin had been with the organization for years. And this wasn’t an organization that you just...  _ left. _ You were in it until the end. There was no way out. _

_ Only, it seemed that Kevin had found one. _

_ I passed his message on, about Palmetto. I had no idea what it meant, but judging by the way Riko’s face tinted white to red to nearly green, he did. _

_ “He talked to you before he left?” He said. His voice was low - the kind of low that was dangerous for anyone within reach. I shrugged. _

_ “I didn’t know he was leaving,” I said. “He just said to tell you that and I had assumed he’d gone back to his room.” _

_ Riko’s expression grew contemplative. _

_ “What else did he tell you?” He asked me, slowly. _

_ I debated my options, and then I said: “Nothing. He was in and out of my room in under five minutes. That’s why I thought he was still here.” _

_ Riko searched my expression the same way Kevin had the night before. He, too, seemed satisfied in what he saw. _

_ “Let’s get to work, then,” he said, and we did. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

They were nearly 40 feet from the highway when Andrew heard Neil choke behind him.

He turned, and there was a Butcher, his sagging, crooked face grinning at Andrew, as he squeezed his arm around Neil’s throat.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ I spent months keeping up the illusion that everything was the way it should be, that I was simply doing the job I had been trained to do; scouting, hunting, killing. Everything was quiet for a while. _

_ But I saw Riko slipping. _

_ It was in little ways; bursts of anger that were quickly smothered under a smooth facade. Acts of aggression towards others when they didn’t complete a task as precisely as he wanted it to be. He grew sloppy in his Butcher killings. He was slowly going mad. _

_ I, meanwhile, spent my time searching for answers to the questions that Kevin had left behind. _

_ And there was so much that I found. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“Run,” Neil wheezed, and the Butcher’s grin grew impossibly wider.

“Yeah, Andrew,” the Butcher said. “Run.”

Branches and bushes cracked and rustled around them as more Butchers closed in. The people on the highway drove on. The arm around Neil’s neck grew tighter.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ Moriyama. _

_ Riko’s last name was Moriyama. _

_ The same Moriyama as Ichirou Moriyama, the Senator of Maryland. _

_ The place where the Butcher of Baltimore reigned. _

_ The place where I was born. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew moved.

He charged the Butcher, silent and deadly and ready to end everything in one swift moment. He had become more than willing to meet their violence with his own, and he had learned over the course of these last few years exactly how to do that.

Neil let out another wheeze as his oxygen supply was cut even more, but Andrew was busy driving his thumbs into the Butcher's eyes, pushing as far inward and far apart as he possibly could until he felt them squish between his fingers. The Butcher screamed, releasing Neil and thrashing blindly in Andrew's direction.

His hand connected with Andrew's face once, then twice, and the world went black for a moment.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ The more I looked into things, the more I felt the foundation I had been building crumble at my feet. _

_ None of the others knew. There were some, I'm sure, but none of the ones who mattered. Dan, for one. Alvarez, and Jeremy and Laila. There were genuinely good people who thought they were doing good. Thought they were helping. Riko had swayed them like he had swayed me. Convinced them there was a war when it was nothing but a ruse. _

_ I don’t think it really hit me, though, until Lola came to the base. _

_ It had been nearly 20 years since I had seen her, but Lola looked exactly the same as she had when she worked for my father. _

_ Lola, the first person to train me on knives. Lola, the woman who gave me nearly as many scars as the other ghosts that haunt me. _

_ Just like that, she was there, talking to Riko as if they were old friends. _

_ “Junior!” She called out to me. She waved at me. She strode over to me as if she were a predator and I was the prey, and I was frozen to the spot with fear. _

_ “I’m leaving,” I blurted out, and Lola and Riko both stopped moving toward me. _

_ And then Riko laughed. _

_ “Where would you go?” he asked. _

_ “Home,” I said. “Away from here. I’m done with this. I know the truth.” _

_Riko watched me for a minute, thinking. And then he shrugged._

_"Fine," he said. "Go ahead. I can't keep you here against your will or anything."_

_As I turned to leave, Riko let out a hum._

_ “Oh, we were just talking about you, you know,” Riko said conversationally. “We were talking about how much Lola would like to meet your husband.” _

_ The foundation that I had built came crashing down completely. _

_ “You can’t,” I said, as if it would make any difference in the world. _

_ “We can,” Riko said. “And we will. You understand the stakes, Nathaniel. Do not disappoint me.” _

_ Nathaniel. _

_ Junior. _

_ [a pause] _

_ Names can carry such a hold over us, can’t they? _

_ [radio clicks off]  _

* * *

Neil regained his breath and moved in for a kick as Andrew stumbled backward, but caught a rebound from one of the Butcher’s swings and was on the ground again. The Butcher turned toward him again, and Andrew used that moment to reach for a rock and take a swing, hitting him over and over until he was down, and twice more until the Butcher did not move any more.

It was silent for a moment, save for the sound of heavy breathing. Andrew wasn’t sure if it was him or Neil or the Butchers in the bushes.

At the remembrance of the others, he dropped the rock and grabbed Neil’s wrist instead.

“We have to go,” he said, and they ran.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ Months went by after that, with Riko holding onto my name like a leash attached around my throat. _

_ I was allowed to go home, of course, but I was more paranoid than comfortable, constantly waiting for someone from base to appear on my doorstep and ruin the life I had tried so desperately to protect. _

_ In the end, though, it wasn’t the monsters that had found me. _

_ I had run straight to them, instead. _

_ [a pause] _

_ The choice to leave was the hardest decision I’ve ever made. _

_ But knowing that I was actively putting Andrew in danger every time I came home... _

_ I would rather die than have him hurt because of me. _

_ And so I broke my promise. _

_ I ran. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew could hear out of his working ear that the Butchers were closing in fast. He dragged Neil up onto the highway with him and, practically halfway into the road, flagged down a truck and frantically begged for a ride to wherever the next town was.

The man agreed, and Andrew practically threw himself and Neil into the bed of the truck.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ Months passed alone. I was half of who I had become -- it was my own fault, and that made me feel even worse. _

_ I tried not to think too much about what Andrew might be doing at any given time. My go-to thought was that he had simply given up on me; he had told me once that if I ran, that was it. There was no looking for me after. And I believed it, you know? Why wouldn’t I. He probably absolutely hated me. _

_ One day, though, as I watched the news crews covering another violent event that we had been investigating, I decided to let him know that I was okay. And so, almost without thinking, I pushed my way through the crowd and made my way to the front, and I stared straight into the camera. I guess I hoped that, somehow, Andrew was watching. _

_ Riko was furious, of course, but I didn’t stop. _

_ A fire outside of Tacoma. A landslide in Thousand Oaks. A hostage situation in Saint Joseph. I kept doing it. _

_ Would I have done it if I had known it would lead Andrew into doing what he did? Probably not. I had sacrificed everything to keep him safe, and my decision lead him spiraling out into the most dangerous places of all. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

From the next town over they were able to rent another car. They got the nicest one they had, because Andrew was feeling like driving something nice for a change and they knew their line of credit would be burned away once the other car never showed up to the rental company.

The nicest car they had, though, was just okay. And from there it was back to their truck.

They sat silent the entire ride back, until Andrew parked the car in front of the truck and turned off the ignition. He set his hands on the wheel and looked straight ahead for a long time. Neil watched him, waiting.

Finally, Andrew said, “I saved you.”

Neil still sat silent, though the look on his face suggested he was a bit confused. Andrew continued without looking at him.

“I saved you,” he said. “Just now. I saved you. I’ve fought Butchers, I’ve fought Lola, and I’ll be fighting Riko soon, too.”

His grip on the steering wheel tightened. “You know my demons and everything I’ve fought through my life. You know what I am capable of. You know who I am.

“So go ahead,” he said. “Go ahead and kid yourself that everything you did was because I needed protection and somehow, that justifies you breaking the one promise that was the most important in our relationship. Make yourself feel better about abandoning me, for running out when you got  _ scared _ .”

He finally looked at Neil; a flat, hard look.

“You remember this,” he said. “You remember the fact that I saved your ass, just now. You remember everything I’ve ever been through, everything I’ve done, and the next time someone comes for you, stand down and let me deal with it. Do you understand?”

The silence in the car was heavy. Neil watched Andrew, letting the words sink in, and then he frowned, a minute movement of his eyebrows that Andrew knew as irritation.

“If it means losing you,” Neil said softly, “then no.”

Andrew blinked once, then twice, and then frowned, climbing out of the car and into his truck, ready to get the fuck out of Texas and onto whatever was going to happen to them next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Andrew.exe has stopped working]


	24. The Motel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made this chapter much longer than it needed to be and I really like it so here u go

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Renee called me a week ago. _

_ “The article is almost ready,” she said. “It’s almost finished, and then we can send it out to print. But I need a bit more time, Andrew. I need to make sure it’s all verified.” _

_ “That’s fine,” I said. And it was. I’ve waited this long. What was another day, or week, or year? _

_ “We’ll lay low,” I told her. “We’ll wait.” _

_ [Neil:] _

_ For three nights we went off the grid. Afterward, things were different between us. _

_ I’m not sure, exactly, what happened at that motel. I can’t piece together any part of it. I don’t know Andrew’s half, and I don’t understand mine.  _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ But we were different after the motel. _

_ I don’t think the rest of the trip would have been the same if it hadn’t been for those three nights. _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter IV: The Motel.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ When I was born, my mother gave me away. _

_ I realize that sentence is usually the beginning of a memoir about abandonment issues but, considering how the past few years have turned out, I would say that the cliche is not far from the truth. _

_ My twin brother Aaron was kept. How did she choose? I have no idea. That’s something that I have never known, nor will ever know. The point is, though, that I was given away while he got to keep the mother I never knew. _

_ Now, I had never known he existed either, but that’s another story entirely. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Every minute the two of them sat in public increased their chances of being found.

Neil knew a lot of Fox Shipping members, but it wasn’t like he knew them all. And both of them felt as though they wouldn’t like to risk running into a new form of Butcher that could pass as a normal human.

So, hiding felt like the best possible option.

They found an old motel off of a highway that had become abandoned with the construction of a nearby interstate. It looked as though no human had set foot on the property in at least twenty years, so they pulled their truck around the back and unpacked, prepared to stay for a while.

That night, Andrew saw a light coming from one of the rooms.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Foster care is a shit place to end up, you know? _

_ I don’t feel like talking about my experiences there. _

_ It was just... Bad. _

_ Well, it was bad until I met Cass. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew chalked it up to other squatters.

Though, at the same time, he was unsure as to how a light was able to work in a motel that provided zero electricity and very contaminated water.

And yet, there it was, shining at him from the other side of the pool.

Later that night as he was grabbing something from the truck that had been left behind, he passed by the room to find a man leaning over the balcony. He had a cigarette in between his lips and was doubled over at the middle, craning over the bars as if trying to see the sky from around the roof.

“Hey,” Andrew said, and the man turned to look at him. His neck craned similar to an owl.

“Hey,” he said back, and waved Andrew up.

Andrew went.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Cass was a good mother. _

_ She was, actually, the first real person who taught me what a mother could be. She cared about my interests, listened to me talk about my day at school, made me food and bought me clothes and took me to the library when I wanted to look for new books. _

_ Cass was a saint. _

_ Her son, though, was not. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The man was middle-aged with a face full of stubble, but his clothes were clean, and well taken care of.

“Cigarette?” he asked as Andrew climbed onto the balcony.

“Sure,” Andrew said, and took the unlit offering, pulling out his own lighter and taking a drag to start it.

“I’m Howard,” the man said.

“I’m Andrew,” Andrew said. “What brings you here, Howard?”

The man scoffed, shrugging his shoulders and gesturing out at the motel.

“What brings anyone to a place like this?” he said. “Circumstances in my life are what they are. This place isn’t too bad, truth be told, but I do wish the service was a little better.”

Andrew almost laughed, though the joke was said a bit too earnestly for it to really be funny.

“It feels like housekeeping hasn’t come by in days,” Howard continued. “I could use a fresh towel, you know?”

Andrew began to think that maybe the man wasn’t joking.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [silence] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ I’ll spare the details. _

_ The only thing you need to know is that I found my brother after a mix-up with a DNA test and a narcotics bust where, for some reason, my name popped up in a system when he was the one tested. _

_ Needless to say, my brother hit a very deep rock bottom that night. _

_ He wrote to me. I ran. Got myself thrown in jail to save him, got out and ended up with Mother Dearest, her Westboro brother, and his decently-interesting son, Nicky. _

_ Things were looking... Tolerable. Aaron was getting clean, I was breathing, Nicky was coming to terms with himself out in Germany, far away from the reach of his parents. _

_ But then our dear Mother decided that it was no fun being high by herself, and tried dragging Aaron back down with her. _

_ And when he refused, things got violent. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

As Andrew went out for a walk, Neil stayed at their campsite by the truck.

There was no way they were going to go into one of the rooms, and quite frankly, Neil was creeped out by the scenery. He’d seen enough things in abandoned places to last him a lifetime; he wasn’t about to go exploring now. Staying where you were meant staying safe, and he had no interest in being risky now.

At least he felt that way until he caught movement near the front desk.

He shook it off initially. It must have been a possum, he thought, or a raccoon.

For a moment, though, it had looked like a person spinning in place.

But it was hard to say what he truly had seen.

Throughout Neil Josten’s life, he had had many close calls. Many times where checking out hunches had been a problem, but also many times where not checking had been a problem, too.

He decided that this time, he would check.

He picked his way through the broken front window and into the abandoned lobby. A thick film of dust covered everything. The entire lobby looked like someone had taken all of the furniture and thrown it up into the air a few times. Time truly wrecks all.

There was no one in the lobby. It had been some kind of animal, or a trick of the wind.

Or at least that’s what Neil told himself, before he started hearing the music.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Andrew:]_

_ See, when I found out about Aaron, I went through a lot of emotions. _

_ I hated it, and then I was indifferent about it, and then I was sad, and then happy, and then sick to my stomach at the thought of the monster in my life becoming Aaron’s, too. _

_ It’s why I sent myself to prison. _

_ I would - and still will - protect my brother with my life. Even if he doesn’t ever believe that I would. Though he should know by now what my actions have proven. _

_ It does not matter to me who stands in my way of protecting him. I have grown up with monsters hiding in my closet. I don’t want any to be hiding in my brother’s too. _

_ Even if that monster is our own mother. _

_ [a pause] _

_ How long is the statute of limitations on murder? _

Is _ there a statute of limitations on murder? _

_ [a pause] _

_ What if it’s not murder, but... accidentally wrapping your mother’s car around a tree with you in the passenger’s seat? _

_ Does that count? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“It’s my wife and I,” Howard said. “We’re having the usual difficulties, but it seemed best that I move in here for a while. Just until things cool off, you know?”

Andrew took another look around them. Looked at the sagging walls and water-stained ceilings. Howard continued.

“I miss the kids though,” he said. “I miss them like a wound.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Andrew said. And in a way, he was.

“Oh no need to be sorry,” Howard said. “Just a thing that happens, you know?”

He paused for a moment, taking another drag of his cigarette. “It’s nice to have some neighbors,” he said. “This place is so quiet usually. I don’t know how they stay in business.

“But that’ll change real soon. My wife’s gonna bring the kids, and I’m gonna take them down to the pool. Haven’t been able to take them to a pool in years. I apologize if the kids playing there ends up loud, you know how kids are, but I hope you’ll think about how happy it makes me and feel some forgiveness.”

Andrew looked out over the pool. It was dry, cracked and empty and crumbling around the edges. No one had stepped near it in decades.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He began to stand, ready to head to bed and figure out if this whole thing was some kind of weird dream. “Have a good night.”

“You too,” Howard said. “Don’t be a stranger.”

Howard stubbed out his cigarette and flicked it over the side of the balcony, heading back into his room and turning off his light, and it looked just as abandoned as it had earlier that night.

Andrew wasn’t sure whether the smoke he still smelled was his own.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ After our... accident... Aaron and I were left without a guardian. Nicky was only sixteen, we were thirteen, the world was a big and scary place that, at this point, didn’t scare me much anymore. _

_ Aaron was scared, though, and that made me feel at least a little bit bad about it. _

_ Luther refused to take us in, and honestly? That was fine with me. I think at that point I would have rather been in the system than live with him. I think that at this point, I still would. _

_ So Aaron and I got shuffled back into the government’s hands. It was familiar territory for me, but Aaron was young and scared and angry and grieving and coming off of so many drugs he could barely think straight. We made it through five homes in a year. The lady in charge of our case made it seem like some kind of record. Though it probably was. _

_ We were content to ride out our time in the system until we exited at 18. We had each other, and that was really all that mattered. We had each other, and we were safe as long as we had each other’s backs. _

_ And then we met Bee. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

It was strong music; string music. It sounded almost classical.

It was coming from the pool.

The music glitched and warped and occasionally looped back on itself like a record damaged from the rain.

Neil didn’t like it.

He decided not to check, this time.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Bee was patient. _

_ Aaron and I were disaster children. We had been through trauma and found a way to turn that outward, lashing out everyone that came across us. We pushed people away on purpose, we latched onto each other and that was it; it was us against the world. _

_ Bee understood, and she waited. _

_ Slowly, so very slowly, Aaron and I began to let her in. And soon we were content, the three of us, though I never stopped keeping one hand on the back of Aaron’s jacket to keep him within arm’s reach. _

_ Eventually, though, the jacket came off and he was gone. _

_ The thing about growing up is that you don’t ever really  _ feel _ like you’ve grown much at all. You don’t realize that you’re leaving your old self behind, because it happens in little ways. _

_ Suddenly, your favorite food isn’t your favorite anymore. The shows you used to watch just aren’t as good, the music you used to listen to just isn’t the same. _

_ You grow. You evolve. You meet new people and travel new places and extend your radius a bit further with each passing day. _

_ And soon, you don’t realize that the people around you are leaving until they’re already gone. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The next day was quiet. Andrew read, and Neil sat on one of their folding lawn chairs and watched the broken window of the lobby. Andrew thought it was a bit weird, but didn’t comment. The two of them weren’t exactly speaking much, and he wasn’t going to be the first to break that.

That night the light in Howard’s room was on again, and Andrew could see the dull glow of a cigarette lighting the corners of his face. Andrew climbed the stairs to the second-floor walkway, and Howard nodded in acknowledgment as he frowned down at the parking lot.

“Everything okay there Howard?” Andrew asked. Howard crushed the cigarette between his lips as he pursed them together.

“She was supposed to bring the kids,” he said. “But she didn’t. I’m in a bad place, Andrew, I’ll level with you.”

“Well,” Andrew started, though he wasn’t exactly sure what he was trying to say. “Well... I’m sure she will eventually.”

“I dunno,” Howard said. Andrew didn’t really know, either. “See, she was the one that screwed up first. That’s the thing about all this, I was in the right, you know? But I savored it too much. Righteousness is a powerful drug. There can be something dangerously addictive about being the justifiably angry one in an argument, you know?”

“Yeah,” Andrew said. “Maybe.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ I had lost Neil once. _

_ He had grown up in the hands of his own monster, just as Aaron and I had. The only difference was that his mother had taken him and escaped. _

_ She had brought him to Columbia to live with his uncle, hoping that with the combination of the Butcher of Baltimore behind bars and half of the British mafia keeping them safe, they would be protected. _

_ But then Nathan got out, and Mary got scared, and she took her son and ran a second time. _

_ This time, the monsters caught up. _

_ They might have been fine if she had stayed with Stuart. Just because Nathan was released doesn’t mean he had an arsenal to get through a thousand British gangsters. And yet she still felt it wasn’t enough, and did what she thought would keep her family safe. _

_ It was, unfortunately, the thing that destroyed her in the end. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Neil could hear the music again that night, and this time, he decided to go and see what it was attached to.

The music swayed and turned as he made his way to the pool. It grew louder as he approached, the strings sliding nauseatingly up and down, and as he approached the chain-link fence that separated the pool from the rest of the motel, he saw her.

It was a woman in an old dress, spinning in place in time with the music. She held her hands above her head, as if imitating a ballerina. Her arms were long, incredibly long, and her fingers were crooked and angled as if broken. She stopped spinning for a moment and made a leap, legs splayed out, landing on her knees and stumbling back up, unaffected.

Neil took a quiet step back, attempting to leave her, but his sleeve caught in the chain link and the fence rattled as he turned.

The woman stopped moving at the exact same moment the music stopped playing.

Her head snapped to him, her head twisting like an owl, her eyes wide and hollow and bottomless. Her face looked haunted, contorted, empty, manic.

She turned her body and dropped to all fours, her arms just as long as her legs, and she began crawling toward Neil across the bottom of the pool, climbing the side of the pool to get to him.

Neil turned and ran, and did not stop running until he reached the truck.

When he turned around, he was alone.

The music had started up again.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ We all have monsters that follow us through our lives. _

_ We all have demons, all have stories that we wish could go untold. _

_ We choose how to slay our monsters. We choose how to confront them. We are given our options, and whichever path we take will change the way our stories are told. _

_ Sometimes, the choices we make are the right ones. _

_ Sometimes, they are wrong. _

_ And sometimes, those choices affect the people around us, no matter how hard we try and keep them out of it. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“I shut her out,” Howard said. “I thought that would punish her. But it just made matters worse. That was me fucking up.”

He took a drag of a newly lit cigarette. He looked very tired.

“Now we are both fucked up, and for what? There was no winning, no upside. We had both lost, and now I wait here for her to bring the kids, and she never brings them.”

“You should go home and try talking to her,” Andrew said. A small voice in the back of his mind whispered  _ hypocrite _ . “Or at least talk to the kids.”

Howard paused, seeming contemplative.

“I should do that,” he said, finally. “You’re right Andrew. I should.”

He was quiet for a bit longer, and then he said, “But it’s no use. She isn’t going to forgive me and I’m not going to forgive her.”

He tossed his cigarette off the balcony again, and Andrew knew the conversation was finished.

“It feels like we’re stuck like this,” Howard said. “No way out for either of us.”

He sighed, his breath ragged with the tears he was holding back.

“Good night,” he said. “I wish I could have been better company.”

He went inside. The light instantly shut off. 

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Maybe Aaron would not have fallen into the hands of my monster if I hadn’t gone to juvie. Maybe I would have found a way to escape, and maybe I could have saved Aaron from his own demons before they came for him the way that they had. _

_ Maybe if I had moved in with my mother earlier, there would have been a way to save her that didn’t involve matricide. _

_ Maybe if Mary had kept her son in Columbia, she would still be alive. _

_ [a pause] _

_ Maybe if Neil had talked to me instead of running away, we wouldn’t be standing on two sides of a canyon, staring at each other in silence over the divide. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew was waiting for Howard when he came out of his room that night.

“Hey,” he said quietly. Andrew already had a cigarette lit for him. He took it gratefully.

“How are you feeling?” Andrew asked, and Howard shrugged.

“Alright,” he said. “I just have to be more patient. She’ll bring the kids soon enough, and then I’ll take them down to the pool, and it’s going to be a fine day.” He leaned against the railing and looked at Andrew, smiling softly. “Maybe you and your husband could join us.”

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” Andrew said. Despite everything, he felt bad leaving Howard behind.

“Too bad,” Howard said. “But I understand. Not a lot of life left in this place. I’m sure folks like you have better things to do than wait around in this backwater. Unlike me.” He laughed. “I got no better things to do at all.”

“It was nice having you as a neighbor, Howard,” Andrew said.

“Shit. It was nice having the company,” Howard said. He leaned further over the railing, extending his neck out even more to look past the roof up into the sky. “You be safe on those roads, okay? I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how dangerous they can be.”

Andrew thought for a moment, and then asked, “Do you know about Palmetto?”

Howard laughed at the stars.

“Maybe,” he said. “But it’s not the kind of thing that can be talked about. It’s more of a thing that you do, you know?”

He turned to look at Andrew, squinting his eyes a bit and then smiling softly.

“Maybe you don’t know, then,” he said. “But you will soon.”

They were quiet for a long time, and finally, Andrew stood.

“You’ll be okay?” he asked. Howard gave him a nod.

“I’m going to be just fine. My kids are coming soon, after all.” His grin grew a bit. “Have a nice night.”

At the door, Andrew paused.

“Hey, Howard?”

“Yes, Andrew?”

“Say hi to your kids for me, okay?”

Howard smiled.

“I absolutely will,” he said.

He went back into his room. His light turned immediately off.

Andrew would never see him again.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Sometimes when we make choices in our life to protect the ones we love, we end up hurting them in the process. _

_ I shut Aaron out when we first met. After I was released from juvie, I killed our mother. Aaron hated her, but he had an emotional connection that I was never capable of forming. _

_ I hurt him, and I am still making up for that. _

_ When Mary took Neil and ran the second time, it lead to her death. _

_ In the way that our mother’s death hurt Aaron, Mary’s death hurt Neil. _

_ She was trying to protect him. I was trying to protect Aaron. _

_ [a pause] _

_ When Neil left, although it was incredibly misguided, he was trying to help me. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

When Neil heard the music that night, he walked to the fence of the pool already knowing what he would see.

And there was the woman again, in the same old, torn up dress, spinning and falling and twirling as the music warped and skipped around her.

This time, he did not run.

He took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and said: “Hi.”

Once again the woman stopped at the same moment as the music. She looked at him with her face, long and haunted and hollow and terrifying, and fell onto all fours to charge at Neil again.

But this time, Neil stood his ground.

Neil wondered, for a moment, if a ghost could actually hurt him. What would they be able to do, really? He suspected it wouldn't be worse than what a human being could do to you, and he had survived a lot of that.

And so he stood his ground.

She flew across the cracked pavement, stopping once she reached the fence. She smelled like a water-damaged library.

She unfolded herself slowly upwards and Neil realized that she was several feet taller than he was. Her face was even more hollow up close.

They stared at each other, and in her eyes, Neil saw tears. She shook and shook and then held out her hand. Neil took it. Her hand felt like old paper.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for staying, even if for a moment.”

Her voice sounded like wind through the trees.

They stayed that way for a long moment, silent and staring. And then she took her hand away and stepped backward, curling up onto the floor and rolling off the edge of the pool. Neil didn’t hear her land, and he didn’t see her in the pool.

He turned to walk back to the truck in silence.

He never heard the music again.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Neil’s choice to leave hurt me. _

_ In this story, he chose the wrong path. _

_ It hurt me, knowing that he didn’t trust me enough to take me with him. That he didn’t think I was capable of handling myself. _

_ And logically I know that that isn’t necessarily true. I know that he left not because he thought I couldn’t handle it, but because he knew that I would. _

_ He knew that I would dive head-first into this in order to make sure that he was safe. It would put my life in jeopardy, and he didn’t want to risk that. _

_ Neil has always been a martyr. _

_ [a pause] _

_ I think, now, that I am tired of the silence. I think that it is time to begin building a new bridge across the divide that sits between us. _

_ I am not ready to forgive him. Not yet. _

_ But I think I am ready to start. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The next morning, Andrew pointed their truck at the rising sun and began their trek on to the highway and whatever came next.

Beside him, Neil reached out, palm up on the center console, unmoving. An invitation.

After a long moment, Andrew reached out his own hand, twining his fingers with Neil's and letting his hand rest there.

It was not forgiveness, but it was a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Backstories: changed  
Twinyards: close  
Nicky: happy  
Me: crying


	25. What Happened to Nathan Wesninski

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ We encountered the Unreal at midnight in a Denny’s. _

_ It was accidental. Well... it was accidental on our part. I assume, though, that we weren’t seeking, but being sought. _

_ We were hungry. We’d been driving for hours and, as the official Denny’s slogan says, “it’s not good, but hey, it’s there.” _

_ So, there we went. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ We entered to that smell. That... Denny’s smell. Like food, but less so. _

_ There was no one waiting to see us and, actually, we didn’t see any waiters at all. But there were a few customers at tables, so we assumed they were open and grabbed ourselves a few menus, heading toward the back of the restaurant. _

_ The back, though, was a lot farther away than it should have been. _

_ We kept walking and walking and walking past tables and booths with the occasional customer. They looked slightly sick, like they knew something was wrong but not sure how to explain it, and they were just going to ride it out. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ And then, a couple hundred impossible feet of Denny’s later, we saw an Oracle sitting in a big clamshell both in the back corner. _

_ It was like a gravity well. The metaphysical weight of the Oracle had stretched the Denny’s, and we had rolled our way to the bottom. _

_ They waved us over. _

_ “ _ ** _Come have a seat,_ ** _ ” they said. Their voice was friendly but distant, like a casual greeting screamed across the Grand Canyon. “ _ ** _I ordered some seasoned fries, but it might take a while for the guy to find his way here_ ** _ .” _

_ What could we do? We sat. _

_ I love seasoned fries. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter V: What Happened to Nathan Wesninski.**

* * *

* * *

The seasoned fries didn’t come. They had been tricked.

But still, they were sitting with an Oracle that was still alive and... breathing? Andrew couldn’t tell. But either way, it was something.

Not fries, but still something.

“ **This conversation was nice** ,” the Oracle said. “ **I hardly get the chance to talk to people** .”

“The conversation just started,” Andrew said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

“ **Ah,** ” they said. “ **Right. We just started** .”

“There are a lot of questions we’d like answered,” Neil said. “Like what are the Butchers? Where did they come from?”

“ **All of your questions will be answered** ,” the Oracle said. “ **Or they already have been. Or they won’t be. Those are three possibilities** .”

“You can see the future,” Andrew said, stifling my irritation.

“ **I interact with time differently than you do** ,” they said. “ **For me, everything is always happening all at once. I do not ‘see’ the future. I am currently experiencing the future, as strongly as I am experiencing this moment, as strongly as I am experiencing the past. At all times, I have to maintain what I have already done, so it will continue to have happened. It is exhausting. You weren’t going to ask me how it made me feel, but there is your answer anyway.”**

The table fell into a heavy silence. Andrew thought that heavy might be the best way to describe it. He could feel the pressure weighing on his chest.

“What about the Butchers?” Neil asked after a moment, and the Oracle sighed.

“ **Ah,** ” they said. “ **The Butchers** .”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Nathan Wesninski wasn’t taught violence. He came to it naturally. _

_ Nathan was someone who, even as a boy, drew people toward him with his smile and his charm. _

_ It wasn’t that Nathan was polite due to his manners. It was that Nathan was polite due to the fact that, if he said please and thank you and smiled just the right way, people would find a way to give him exactly what he wanted. _

_ He found it was easiest to persuade the other children in his class, drawing them close in his inner circle and making them feel important before asking them to do small things, like pay for his lunches or steal him candy from the teacher’s jar. _

_ Not everyone believed in Nathan’s charade, though. _

_ Once, he turned his attention to a child two grades below him named Theodore. Nathan had asked him for money for candy, and Theodore had denied him, no matter how nicely Nathan had asked. _

_ After the third attempt, he was finished talking. _

_ Once, Nathan followed Theodore home from school with a few of his friends, chirping out insults behind him. When Theodore didn’t respond, Nathan got angry and threw a rock at Theodore’s head.  _

_ Theodore crumbled instantly, and an accusatory finger in blood stuck toward Nathan. _

_ Nathan walked away, leaving Theodore in the street. Nathan never heard what happened and never cared to ask, but he never saw Theodore in school again. _

_ This made him feel powerful. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“ **It would certainly be easier to think of the Butchers as monsters** , **”** said the Oracle.

Neil raised an eyebrow. “If the Butchers aren’t monsters, then what would you call them?”

The Oracle nodded, as if Neil had made a statement they agreed with, rather than asked them a question.

“ **They are a feeling** ,” they said. “ **A feeling made manifest** .”

“Why can’t you ever speak plainly?” Andrew asked. He was making the efforts to contain his irritation, but it was a bit hard at the moment.

The Oracle hunched over their hands upon the table.

“ **I am speaking as plainly as I can** ,” they said. “ **Human language is designed for those who experience time in a linear way. One second, and then another, and never repeating a second once it’s gone. It is difficult for me to adapt such language to the way I exist. I can’t remember what I’ve already told you, or what you will be told but not yet. From my point of view, you’ve already learned everything you are ever going to learn. I just am not sure what parts are now, and what parts are later** .”

“What are you?” Neil asked. “What are the Oracles?”

The Oracle looked at him from within the shadows of their hoodie. At least, Andrew assumed that they were. They seemed to be weighing an answer.

“Order of fries here?” 

Suddenly there was a man standing over their table with a basket of seasoned fries. 

“Sorry it took so long,” he said. “I uh, I didn’t even know this part of the restaurant existed. Does that make sense?”

“Not really,” Andrew said, taking the fries from him. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. I think the problem will solve itself.”

The man nodded absently and wandered away through the warped Denny’s. Andrew tried a fry. They had gone cold during his search for the table.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_[Neil:]_

_ As the years went on, Nathan’s circle grew. _

_ He moved on from grade-school squabbles to bigger and better things. Drug running, weapons dealing, enforcer work for high-level people. _

_ Nathan Wesninski grew into a debt collector of a different nature, and he loved every minute of it. _

_ His influence led to those beneath him following him to the ends of the Earth. If you were in Nathan’s crew, he would take care of you. _

_ If you weren’t, he would take care of you in a different kind of way. _

_ Nathan learned very quickly that if you had enough money lining the pockets of people in charge, you were untouchable. Half of the Baltimore police force were on his payroll. The other half simply kept their mouths shut. _

_ When Nathan looked in the mirror, he saw power. _

_ He leaned into it, devoting himself to his climb to the top. _

_ He taught others how to live this way. Taught others the feeling of power, the feeling of greed, the feeling of hate and violence and murder. _

_ Soon there were others just like him. Hundreds of others with the same smile, the same thirst for power and the same hunger for humanity. _

_ And then one day, the Moriyamas came calling. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

“What do you mean when you say the Butchers are feelings made manifest?” Neil asked, bringing the Oracle back to their earlier point.

“ **It is easy to think of bad men as not human. They are animals, we say. They are monsters, we say** .” The Oracle shrugged. “ **These are comforting lies. If those who commit atrocities are an entirely different species than humans, then you could never be complicit. These impulses would not exist within you. But they do. The bad is as human as the good** .”

“I don’t understand,” Neil said. Andrew ate another fry.

_ “ _ **What is deeply felt on the inside can make itself known on the outside. We can believe so deeply in an idea that we are changed.**

“ **Butchers** .” The Oracle laughed, a low, dark thing. “ **They are mere men, after all** .”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ “We want to offer you a job,” the Moriyamas said. _

_ “We’ll pay you well,” the Moriyamas said. _

_ “You will live on forever through your legacy,” the Moriyamas said. _

_ Nathan accepted without hesitation. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Andrew and Neil made their way out of the Denny’s with nearly as many questions as they had entered with.

Two hours later, Andrew received a text message from Renee.

“Her story is going up in a few hours,” Andrew read. “It’s over. It’s all going to be out there.”

He looked up at Neil, who wore the same tired expression as Andrew.

“It’s all over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very quick chapter, but a chapter none the less.
> 
> Anyway, did I butcher some of my favorite scenes in the series? Mayhaps I did, because I am a disaster human.
> 
> But here ya go anyway (╯°□°）╯


	26. This Isn't It.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All direct quotes belong to Joseph Fink

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_I don’t know what to say. I think this is it._

_[Neil:]_

_Is it? I mean... Yeah. Yeah, it might be it._

_[Andrew:]_

_Renee posted the story today, on her mother’s news site. She sent out copies to the LA Times, and they agreed to publish it as well._

_The story that lays out everything, all of it, about Fox Shipping and the Butchers, it’s all out there._

_[Neil:]_

_Extensively researched. Connections and history that I didn’t even know existed, and I had worked at Fox Shipping for years._

_[Andrew:]_

_The information that we have found out has been injected into the country._

_Is this it?_

_[sighs]_

_This might be it._

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter VI: This Isn’t It.**

* * *

* * *

The cab was quiet as Andrew drove, but it was filled with a buzzing energy that had the both of them nearly vibrating in their seats with anxiety. 

Andrew couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that this was it. This was it. It was done. They would get to go home. They would get to live a life.

He didn’t believe it would all be solved overnight, of course. This wasn’t magic; no one was going to wave a wand and make everything disappear. But it was a start. It was a visual goal. It was a 100 meter dash to the finish line, now.

It was hard work and sacrifice all leading up to the triumphant moment that lay just on the other end of the track. And hadn’t they worked hard? Hadn’t they sacrificed?

Neil reached across to turn on the radio and hear the results of what they’d done. He spun the dial a few times, hunting down a news station, and paused when he finally found one.

The markets were up, the newscaster said. Or maybe down. Andrew couldn’t be bothered to truly care.

“Why aren’t they talking about this?” Neil asked, and Andrew frowned. Neil turned the dial again. Another news station. Something about a mayoral race in Philadelphia.

What was happening? The world had been broken open, but life was going on as though it hadn’t.

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_After everything that I’ve been through in my life, it’s hard to let people in._

_That sounds like almost as big of a cliche as my ‘I was abandoned by my mother’ comparison, and yet, here we are._

_It’s hard for me to trust people, to believe that their intentions are good. That they actually do want to help, and that they actually do care, and aren’t just looking for someone to use for their gain before they run._

_There are exceptions, of course, but this is only because they have earned my trust. Because they’ve worked for it, and proven to me that they are someone who I can trust with the important things in my life._

_Aaron, Nicky, Bee, Neil._

_Robin._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

Andrew pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a diner. He needed to see that this was having an effect on people. It had to.

They went inside, and a smiling woman told them to sit anywhere. Neil blindly made his way to the diner counter and Andrew followed, eyes trained to the TVs above the kitchen.

Two movie stars were getting married and there was coverage of the ceremony. On another channel, the President was headed to Phoenix to talk job numbers.

On the third TV, Ichirou Moriyama’s smiling face stared back at them as he answered questions about his thoughts on Maryland’s newest reforms.

There was nothing mentioned about his complicity in murder after murder. About his work alongside one of Baltimore’s most infamous serial killers.

Andrew went cold.

“Hey,” he said to a man at the counter. The man looked up at him, annoyed.

“Yeah?” he said.

“What do you think of this stuff that came out?” Andrew asked. “The government funding a secret program? Serial killers living on military bases? The Moriyamas’ involvement?”

The man eyebrows fluttered, concerned. He put up his hands placatingly.

“I don’t go much into politics,” he said.

Andrew didn’t know what to say to that.

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_If someone I trust trusts someone else, then occasionally I will give them the benefit of the doubt._

_Aaron’s wife, for example._

_I hadn’t liked her at first. Aaron hadn’t had the most... agreeable track record with the women he’d dated. In fact, it was awful. Absolutely horrendous._

_And then Kaitlyn came into his life._

_They met in med school and she seemed... Okay. But that didn’t mean that I trusted her. She had done nothing to prove herself worthy of it._

_Aaron hated it, of course. Whined about me ruining things if I asked too many questions, scared I was going to run her off. I told him that no, I wasn’t going to do that. If she ran off on her own, then that was her own problem, not mine._

_He didn’t appreciate that joke._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

They left the restaurant.

Neil asked a few people on the street what their thoughts were. Asked them to acknowledge the horror in the news. None of them would. They kept their eyes straight. They kept moving.

It wasn’t until later, sitting in the truck, silent with shock and disbelief, that Andrew understood.

Everyone, everywhere, already knew.

Not the specifics, certainly, but the shape of it. They had known the shape of it for a long time. It is possible to know something and then choose to not know it. And everyone, all of them together had known, and then chosen not to know. So giving them the information had only confirmed their chosen ignorance.

He explained this to Neil, and they sat in the silence for a long time.

What was left?

That had been their plan. There hadn’t exactly been a backup; they weren’t sure what else they could do. Months spent driving back and forth across the country, without a clear idea of what they were even doing anymore, or why they were still even out here.

This wasn't a 100 meter dash to the finish line.

This was running in circles in an empty stadium, going and going and going until one day they would simply collapse.

Andrew thought back to Ichirou’s face on the television in the diner.

He hadn’t been worried.

He had never been worried.

He knew that there was nothing they could do.

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_Kaitlyn was a piece of Aaron that he had never really known he needed._

_I watched, over the next few years, as she grew almost into an extension of Aaron. How she knew what he wanted sometimes before he even knew it himself. How she took care of him. How she fought for him. How she treated him better than any other woman in his life ever had, except for maybe Bee._

_It took almost three and a half years for Kaitlyn to earn my trust. But she did._

_Aaron was only a little bit smug about it, in the end._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

A month after, out in the desert near Slab City, Neil and Andrew went for a hike in the Native American land near Palm Springs. A man sat by the trail a few miles up into the hills.

“It’s beautiful out here,” the man called out as they passed.

“It is,” Neil called back.

“They can’t take that away from us, can they?” the man asked, laughing as he did.

Andrew thought about whose land they were on and how that story went. But he just nodded, because what else could he do?

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_There was Jean, next._

_Neil’s classmate in college, Jean was a French kid who was sulky and sad and snappy and a smart-ass._

_He was a lot of S words, really. Neil loved him like he was his own brother._

_I never saw the appeal of Jean, really. Not as first. He was sarcastic when he wasn’t silent. He was scared when he wasn’t... bitchy._

_I broke the S streak there, but you get the point._

_Like recognizes like._

_Jean had monsters of his own, and no one could ever help him beat them._

_Neil decided that he would try, though._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

Two months later on Easter in North Carolina, they stopped to eat their lunch on the side of the road, watching a farmer use a tremendous machine to plow acres and acres of field on his own. 

He had headphones on. Andrew wondered which true crime podcast he was listening to.

They started to talk about after. 

“Not after victory,” Andrew said. “After surrender.”

Neil watched him, silent. He continued.

“What if we gave up? What if we just found some quiet place to live out our lives, away from a war we could never win? It could be the two of us again, and we could live just like everyone else. We could live knowing, but choosing not to know about the brutality left behind.”

Neil was quiet, contemplative. And then, softly, he said, “There could be peace in giving up.”

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_I told Neil he should just give up._

_“You had to fight your own demons,” I said. “I had to fight mine. This is something that he needs to do himself.”_

_“Not everyone is like us, Andrew,” Neil said. “Some people need help. In fact, I would argue that we needed help too, but were too stubborn to truly take it.”_

_“I never needed help,” I said._

_“What about Bee?” Neil said._

_“Shut up,” I said._

_And that was the end of that conversation._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

Three months later they passed through Louisville, where they ate Ethiopian food at a place downtown with white plastic tables. It came served in a styrofoam takeout box, the injera folded over and under the stews.

The cook came out for a smoke break, nodding politely at them as they ate the food he just made.

“It’s delicious,” Neil said.

He smiled. “Family recipes. Three generations.”

He nodded at his northern city and its southern clothes. “A couple decades ago, none of them would eat it. And now they want to make sure it’s authentic enough.”

He shrugged, and Neil and Andrew continued to eat.

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_By the time Neil and Jean graduated, they were basically best friends. He was over at our apartment constantly, we would go out to dinner, he would crash at our place if we went out drinking too late._

_I hated it._

_I would have trusted him with my life._

_Neil, in the true opposite nature of Aaron, was very smug about it._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

Four months later in Chicago, they sat on a bench overlooking Lake Michigan.

Andrew had grown up thinking “lake”, and envisioning the ones he swam in at camp. But Lake Michigan was an expanse. From where they sat on their bench, they couldn’t see the other side.

An hour into sitting at the edge of the lake, a woman came directly from the jogging path on the shore and flung herself into the freezing water.

“Ah!” she shouted, and Neil stood up from the shock.

“Oh shit,” he called back. The woman laughed.

“It feels amazing,” she said.

“Really?” Andrew asked. The woman shrugged.

“Or terrible,” she said. “But the kind of terrible that’s amazing.”

She slapped the water and screamed again.

* * *

_[radio clicks on]_

_[Andrew:]_

_Robin came last._

_She was a different situation, of course. This whole situation is a different situation. How can you compare when the scale is less of a straight line and more of a roller coaster, at this point?_

_Either way, though, I trust her._

_I found her on the side of the road, and robbed a police station with her. I helped her find out what happened to her mother, and later, I learned that she had apparently joined an underground network of people that were working to dismantle Fox Shipping from the inside._

_I trust Robin just as much as I trust everyone else in my life. And that’s what made this decision so easy._

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

They drove. And as they drove, Adnrew realized: they weren’t alone.

All of those people, all of those people in all of those places, they were waiting to be good. They were waiting for the world to be good. 

What they needed was a way forward.

It wasn’t that they were choosing not to know. 

It’s that they didn’t know what to do with what they knew. 

He had thought it was a matter of knowledge, but it was a matter of organization. 

It was a matter of Palmetto.

Andrew thought about a woman slapping her palms upon Lake Michigan, and a man cooking food from Ethiopia in a rust belt city of Bourbon. He thought about the people that came to the desert in California because they had nothing, and the people who came to the desert because they had everything. And the people who came to the desert, because out past the highways, you could cause all sorts of trouble. He thought about people who grew food in North Carolina, digging their hands into the dirt, and then sat down to eat with the smell of soil lingering on their palms.

America is a country defined more by distance than by culture. But that distance is defined by the people in it. Americans give context to their miles. They are the fine parts that make up the heavy machine that heaves global events forward.

He thought about hands. He thought about millions of hands and what they could do if they all reached the same direction and grasped. 

And that’s when he knew. 

It was as clear to him as a memory, as unshakeable as his own breath. 

They were going to organize, starting with him and Neil and moving from there.

This was a country made up of a distance of people, and they could not be changed through headlines. They had to be organized, one by one by one. 

He and Neil had spent the past year waiting for Palmetto to save them.

But no more.

They would have to become Palmetto themselves.

That was it. 

That was it then.

He pulled over at the next gas station, and he called Robin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost there folks


	27. Speakers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All direct quotes belong to Joseph Fink.

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Here in St. Louis, across the street from a lunar-themed hotel with a rotating artificial moon on its roof, is the remains of a fast food drive-thru. _

_ I don’t know how long it’s been abandoned, but it’s long enough that someone covered the windows in a stained glass patterned wrap, rather than plyboard. It’s like a church in a fast food joint. It’s odd, and interesting, and Neil and I decided to hop the fence and walk the drive-thru. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ The whole system is still there, though it’s missing a bit of the menu and a lot of its parts.But the speaker still stands, a little crooked but surviving, leaning into where cars full of the hungry and the stoned once passed through. _

_ We stand there a moment, and I dare to reach out and brush the back of Andrew’s hand. He lets me take it, and I see him look at me from out of the corner of my eye. _

_ “Yes or no?” he asks, and I don’t even answer. I just lean in. _

_ Kissing him feels like coming home after a long journey away. Though we haven’t been home in years, now, I feel like stepping through the front door back into where I belong. _

_ Things are better. Not perfect, but better. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ As we kiss, the speaker crackles to life and we hear muffled voices and soft laughter through layers and layers of static. It sounds like a radio station straining to pick up the music. _

_ “This place is empty, right?” Neil asks me. I look at him. _

_ “I’m starting to think nowhere is truly empty,” I say, and we listen. _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter VII: Speakers.**

* * *

* * *

They decided to organize.

It was an overwhelming goal to organize a country, so Andrew thought it might be easiest to start with those around them.

And so he called Robin.

Robin gave them a list of connections through the underground system Neil had come from. Neil had connections that he had reached out to already, but Robin had some in corners that Neil had yet to reach.

They whispered through networks that if anyone had any experiences which left them with the feeling there was something seriously  _ wrong _ , had encountered monsters or strange phenomena on the highways or on the quiet streets of their towns.

They were going to meet. They set a date, a month from then, in a park in upstate New York. Near where Andrew had seen Robin last.

Maybe he had hoped that it would make it a bit more likely that Robin would come. Just so he could make sure she was safe, maybe, possibly. But he ignored that thought instead, and showed up with no expectations at all. Whatever came of it was what he had to work with, and they would start there.

A little more than 30 people showed up. Most of them seemed to be local, but some had driven across the country to be there. Among the crowd, Andrew noticed the police officer from the front desk of the Duchess County sheriff’s office in Poughkeepsie, the one who had slipped him and Robin a tape showing what really happened the night Robin’s mother had died. Higgins. That was his name.

Andrew nodded at him, and he nodded back, and then they looked away.

There was a general sense of confusion and slight embarrassment throughout the air. A thought that maybe this was something that they didn’t know how to do, that maybe this was past their capabilities.

The last person to arrive was a tall blonde woman in a tan Gucci sweater and Yeezys. She had the most confident walk Andrew had ever seen, and she walked straight to Neil and pulled him into a hug.

“You’re a fucking menace, you know that?” She said, and let a laughing Neil go to turn to Andrew. She held a hand out. “I’m Allison,” she said. “We spoke on the phone once. I’m pretty fuckin’ pumped that we’re finally doing this.”

And, for a moment, Andrew allowed himself to be pretty fuckin’ pumped, too.

Robin never showed.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ At a fried fish place near Baton Rouge, we started talking to a table of folks. _

_ Well, I talked. Andrew mostly frowned. _

_ It was a touring theater group, I guess. They told us about some of the cities they’d been in, and we started to do the same. We told them about the drive-thru in St. Louis and they got really quiet. _

_ “So you came across the speakers,” one of them said. I think his name was Liam. _

_ “The speakers?” I said. _

_ “Some of those old fast food drive-throughs that have been out of business for a while,” said another one. _

_ “If they leave the speaker system there,” said Liam, “the word is that it sometimes connects with other worlds.” _

_ “Aliens,” said Andrew, with a degree of skepticism that, frankly, I didn’t think our personal experience over the last few years gave us a license to hold. _

_ “No, not that kind of other word,” said Liam, “more like Stephen King. You know, The Dark Tower? There are other worlds than these. Those speakers transmit from other versions of our world.” _

_ “Or that’s what they say,” said one of the others, trying to laugh through the long hair over her face, but not making it convincing. _

_ “We heard it once,” said Liam. “We were parked by an abandoned Burger King eating some sandwiches and the speakers switched on. I got close, I listened.” _

_ “What did you hear?” I said. _

_ Liam bit his lip, shook his head, and stayed quiet. Soon after, the group politely said goodbye. _

_ “Well,” said Andrew as they left, taking a bite of his fish and raising an eyebrow. _

_ “Man, this isn’t even close to the weirdest thing,” I said back. Andrew shrugged. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

As Andrew drove, Neil turned to him in the passenger seat.

“Are the Oracles really on our side?”

The question took Andrew by surprise, but at the same time, it didn’t. He had been wondering the same thing, and it had been sitting in the back of his mind since the Denny’s.

“What are their intentions?” Neil continued. “And if they’re helping us, why?”

Andrew was quiet, with only the noise of the engine filling the cab.

“I don’t know,” he said, which was true. He didn’t. “We can only go on blind faith, I guess. Which is uncomfortable and scary and I hate it, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Neil was quiet, too, and he didn’t bring the subject up again.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ We were west of Lubbock when I saw the Taco Bell with the missing letters from its sign. It clearly hadn’t served as an actual purveyor of food for quite some time.  _

_ I glanced over at Neil and he nodded, though I was already turning toward the exit. _

_ We pulled into the lot. There were no fences, just a sign in the vacant windows letting us know we could rent 1,500 square feet of restaurant space, and to call a number that had been completely scribbled over with Sharpie. We walked over to the drive-through system and sat on the curb. I don’t know what we were waiting for exactly, but we waited. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ And a few minutes later, there was the hum of static, and signal springing to life. Together we leaned into the old mesh of the speaker, set into its little kiosk under a 90’s era bell design.  _

_ For a moment, there was a scramble of voices amid the static. And then, as we moved closer, it seemed to react to our bodies and became sharper, until I heard a definite voice. _

_ My voice. _

_ “You wanna do pizza night tonight?” I asked from the speaker. _

_ “Sure, let’s make a shopping list.” _

_ Now it was Andrew’s voice. Clear as day, it was Andrew. _

_ We met eyes. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ It was a conversation. A domestic conversation, like we had had so many times. _

_ But there were certain references. Mentions of what was happening on the news, like it was all more or less what was currently happening right then. _

_ And then I realized, we were hearing an Us in which Neil had never left. In which I never had to go looking for him. Where the Butchers never came into our lives. _

_ We were hearing an us that had never gone through any of what we had gone through, and we could listen in, from this grass-studded curb off a North Texas highway. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

By their third meeting, the crowd had more than doubled.

They had never openly advertised after their first meeting, instead asking people to reach out to people they knew. And still, they had grown quickly. This meeting was in the parking lot of a mostly out of business mall in the upper Midwest. Straggles tricked in over the course of an hour and they let them, because people were mostly coming in from long distances now.

While there was still no Robin, Andrew would occasionally recognize faces. 

Roland appeared at their fourth meeting, the coast guard officer from the mouth of the Columbia River. A man whose brother and nephew had both disappeared onto a black barge that swallowed the people who had gone investigating it. 

Roland smiled at Andrew as soon as he saw him.

“Hi,” Andrew said.

“Hey,” Roland said.

He glanced over at Neil.

“Oh well,” Roland said, turning a lingering gaze back in Andrew’s direction. His smile was lazy and meddling, and it made the corners of Andrew’s lips twitch upward. “Maybe in a different life. Maybe in a kinder world.”

Andrew gave Roland a flat look, and he laughed, long and loud. Finally, he said, “I’m so glad you’re doing this.”

Andrew nodded, and Roland made his way into the crowd.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Okay. _

_ Who the hell was that? _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

One face had Andrew questioning for a while until he was able to figure it out. It was the cashier at the Easy Stop in Swansea, South Carolina, when he and Robin had gone through looking for the police officer who said he would help her.

He, too, walked up to Neil and swooped him up into a hug.

“Matt!” Neil said, laughing the same way he had with Allison. “Put me down, put me down. What are you even doing here?”

“You know I had to come,” he said. “Allison came to the first one, but it took me a while to figure out where you were headed next.”

He turned to Andrew, seeming to understand his question based on the look on his face.

“You asked me, once, if I wanted to live in a world where what I saw was possible,” he said. Neil looked from Andrew to Matt, visibly confused, but said nothing. “I thought a long time about that. And I don’t. I don’t.”

He nodded, more amen than agreement, and turned back to Neil to catch him up on things.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Any time we saw an empty fast food place, which was fairly often in an economy still staggering under what was done to it ten years ago, we would stop and we would listen. _

_ It was us.  _

_ It was Andrew and I - to use Roland’s phrase - in a kinder world. A world where none of this had happened. _

_ Every time without fail, we got sucked into listening.  _

_ The work we were doing, the organizing of this group, it felt less and less real to me. This was real. Our voices floating barely above the texture of the static, echoing out from speakers plugged into nothing, under menus with prices years out of date. _

_ That was more real than anything in this world. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ It felt like a ghost story, but we... the us on the road, the us  _ now _ ... we were the ghosts. And then there was this other us in the speakers.  _

_ Those two in there were the ones who had lived. And we hadn’t somehow. _

_ We had left our lives behind, and now we haunted ourselves.  _

_ We sat under speakers in southern Utah, in a town that was hardly a town anymore, and I looked up at the full moon and heard us discuss who had lost in a TV cooking competition that night and I thought, none of this is real. _

_ And I meant us. I meant us sitting there. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

A few months later, as Neil was driving, Andrew decided to ask him one of his own questions.

“What even are the Oracles?” he asked. “Where did they come from?”

Neil let out a huffed laugh and gave him the only answer that either of them ever had.

“How the fuck would I know?”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ We stopped moving around the country.  _

_ Other than where we needed to go to the meetings we had set up, we wouldn’t ever really travel. We would find a drive-through, and we would stay there.  _

_ Because what else could we be doing but to listen to this? We ate and we slept and we listened. We hardly talked.  _

_ Those other versions of ourselves talked for us. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ One night Neil had fallen asleep and I was still up listening to us walking back to our car after a date. Tired, easy flirtation with no stakes to it. The kind that happens after years together, where the tension can be switched on and off in any given moment. _

_ Then I heard us get in the car, and I heard the car leave. But the signal did not follow. I continued to hear the parking lot.  _

_ The signal had never left us before. It had always focused in on us. But I kept listening with a pit in my stomach, because I felt like I was being shown something, and it wasn’t something that I wanted to be shown. _

_ I shook Neil awake. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ I didn’t know what I was listening to until Andrew filled me in. It sounded like nothing, like everyday life, but we sat in dead silence, listening.  _

_ And then we heard a man screaming.  _

_ We heard him pleading. _

_ “Look at all those people in there.” _

_ A different voice cut through the static, as though the owner of the voice was standing next to us, and we jumped. Because it was the voice of a Butcher. The first Butcher that Keisha had met. _

_ “I want you to look at them in there, right through those windows in that lit building. Not one of them knows that you’re about to die.” _

_ A whimper. _

_ “No one’s going to help you,” he said. And he was right. We listened to him being right for several horrible minutes, and then the signal cut out with a squeal. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ I hadn’t thought about it. _

_ Or if I did, I assumed the world we were hearing was a world without troubles. That we had been able to float through our lives because it was a better place.  _

_ But in that moment, I knew. The world we were listening to had the same Butchers, the same monstrous problem at the heart of it. The actual difference was that in that other world, the two of us weren’t doing anything about it.  _

_ We were letting it happen, so that we could live our quiet lives. In that world, we were part of the monster. _

_ We never listened to the abandoned drive-throughs again.  _

_ This is the world we live in, so this is the world we’ll change. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

_ \-- _

In their tenth meeting, the size of the crowd was getting a little out of hand. People were hungry for it. They wanted someone to tell them they weren’t alone in what they had seen, and they wanted some way forward on what to do about it. 

They didn’t know if they had that, exactly, but Andrew figured that if they worked together, they could find it. 

At this point, they needed to rent sound systems to hold the meetings. The energy was uncomparable.

They started by calling on the crowd to share stories or what they had seen. Of strange men with sagging faces. Of powerful beings disguised as humans wearing hoodies. A thing seen on the roads that didn’t fit into the narrative this country had made for itself. There was a power in telling your own stories. The ones they knew were true, the ones they hadn’t realized anyone else would believe.

Andrew didn’t know what they had there. Not yet. But he knew it was real. He knew the shape of it. And he knew it could be what took them through to the end, whatever that end may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roland: exists  
Neil: wow that's rude


	28. To Forgive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any direct lines belong to Joseph Fink!!!

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Traveling into Nashville there are mountains that look nearly tropical. Mist over forest canopy, lakes with low bridges. I don’t know what I pictured when I thought of Tennessee, but it certainly wasn’t this. Maybe it was all of the country songs. Kinda pictured... hay. _

_ A soft tap on the cab door in the early hours of the morning woke Neil and I up almost immediately. The slightest sound could mean anything at all. We had to be ready for anything. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ I crawled past Andrew to open the door, tensed and ready for a fight. When the door opened, though, on the other side of it was a girl. A teenager. Long black hair and narrowed eyes, just as suspicious as me as I was of her. _

_ “Oh,” I started, “you must be-” _

_ Andrew pushed his way past me, reaching to the ground and pulling the girl up into the cab. _

_ “You’re safe,” he said, and the girl nodded, her eyes softening. _

_ “Robin.” _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter VIII: To Forgive.**

* * *

The meetings of what was now called Palmetto took place once every three months. Andrew knew when they had started this that this was not going to be a fast process. Almost two years into things, now, and they understood the process. It was not waging a war overnight; it was slowly chipping away at the foundation until there was hardly enough left to stand on.

The meetings had taken on an almost religious aspect. Stories of the Oracles were now recited like encounters with angels. It wasn’t quite worship, but it wasn’t quite not. Andrew and Neil didn’t argue that. Worship and rituals can be tools, used for good or bad, and so that is what they became.

They quickly realized that they couldn’t oversee the group entirely on their own, so anyone who attended a meeting got an assignment: Go back to where they were from and start their own Palmetto group. Gather people around the same way they had. Start hundreds of these all over the country.

A bit more foundation came crumbling off.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ I gave Robin some water and food and sat her down to find out exactly what the hell she had been doing, and if she had found anything. _

_ “Yes and no,” she said, and launched into her story. _

_ She had gone looking for Oracles, like she said she wanted to. Just like we had. And, like us, she found out rather quickly that Oracles are not something that can be tracked down. They come to you. She had visited every abandoned roadside stop, every back corner of every back room that she could find, and she started to get an idea as to the kind of places they were drawn to. _

_ She also discovered, like us, that the Oracles had difficulty communicating with people who experienced time in such a fundamentally different way than themselves.  _

_ She said it was vaguely similar to how her mind worked when she first woke up; when it straddled the line of reality and dream, real and unreal, past and future and present all jumbled together. And so she started meditating for hours in the mornings, trying to hold onto that way of thinking for as long as possible, so that she might try and understand them a bit better. _

_ “But mostly I realized that the Oracles aren’t a cause,” she said around a mouthful of peanut butter sandwich. “They exist to fight the Butchers and everything they stand for. They’re a purpose more than a creature. So it’s not like I’ll ever be able to truly understand them as much as I want to. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t continue their fight myself. That’s all I really care about anyway, ya know?” _

_ I nodded. _

_ “And I knew,” she continued,” if I wanted to be there for the fight, then I had to come to you, Andrew. Because for whatever reason, you are where it ends up.” _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

A coffee shop past closing in a small town off the coast of Delaware. The owner let the others use it because she herself was a member. One of hundreds of small Praxis groups started by one of the original faithful. 

Matt Boyd sat on the top of the counter, whispering stories of Oracles and Butchers and a factory not far from where they were, right now, actually, for real. He told the others again about what Andrew and Neil had told him, passing along the stories as best as he could remember, and like anyone sort of making up any story, he filled in the gaps as best he could. In this way, the story spread, but in a way that people would actually receive.

Then, others told their own stories. In the hush of that half-darkened coffee shop, they shared what they had seen that hadn’t been possible and definitely hadn’t been right. But had been real. They felt the utter relief of being believed.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ “It’s all gonna end soon,” Robin said. And I felt every connotation of good and bad that she meant by that. This was all coming to a head, now, even if we had no real way of knowing what that would mean. _

_ “At least we’re all here for it,” I said, a bit sarcastically. But deep down, I think I felt that. I was glad that we were all here, together, to go through this. As much as I would never admit it, I wouldn’t want to go through it alone. _

_ “Yeah,” Robin said. “Somehow we all found our way here.” _

_ I nodded, and Robin scooted a bit closer to me, letting herself settle in silence as we stared out the front windshield. We could have sat like that forever, if the world would let us. _

_ But the world has never been so kind. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The members of smaller Palmetto groups were asked to start their own groups. The regional became the local. Most towns of almost every size had a Palmetto group. Some were as small as 3 or 4, some were as large as hundreds who had to meet in community centers and libraries. Andrew and Neil didn't know all of the details. They didn't know, exactly, how their story had changed. The one they had told at that first meeting that had taken on a form of its own.

It had become less of an oral history and more of a religious text. Encounters with Oracles were compared to meetings with Angels, powerful beings who were meant to be worshipped. Andrew and Neil had become prophets, or minor deities, depending on who you asked. They were Andrew and Neil, friends of the Oracles, who could fight off Butchers single-handedly, who would someday come back to raise the entire country against the monster that strangled it.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Andrew sat across from me one night in our hotel room, silent as he came back from talking with Robin. _

_ “I don’t know how things will turn out,” he said. “I don’t know if there will be an after. But there might be, so we need to talk about what comes next.” _

_ “Okay,” I said, and I buried my fear. _

_ Andrew and I had stayed together until this point because we had a mission. We had a clear goal in front of us, and it would be more successful if we worked on that goal together. A common goal can cover a lot of dysfunction, a lot of pain. But if we made it through all of this, who’s to say that there would be an “us” left to talk about? _

_ I watched Andrew, and Andrew watched me. And then, quietly, but with surety, he said: _

_ “I forgive you.” _

_ It was like breathing was an option again. It was in no way the words that I was expecting to hear, but like the ocean breaking on the shore, my soul sang with relief. I reached out, hesitant, and Andrew leaned away. _

_ “I’m not finished,” he said. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

It had been over two and a half years of slow growth. Palmetto had unfolded from a word whispered in silent corners to a tangible movement of people; a quiet gathering ready to explode into the open. 

This wasn’t lost on Fox Shipping, or on the Butchers.

In the motel room in Nashville, a piece of paper slid under the door. On the other side of the curtain, a misshapen shadow of a man ambled away. They waited for a long time, and then opened the door for the paper.

_ Nathaniel- _

_ We should talk. It does not have to be this way. Meet me to discuss. Location listed below. _

_ -Riko. _

The address was a remote location in Indiana.

“They’re ready to end it,” Neil said.

“Yeah,” Andrew said. “Put out the call. It’s time.”

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ “I’m not finished,” I said to Neil. “I’m not forgiving you for your sake. I need you to hear all of the parts of this. Not just the ones you want to hear. _

_ “I don’t think you deserve forgiveness, but maybe I also don’t care. Maybe, somewhere, there is a great huge balance sheet where the equation of guilt can be figured so that it’s even on both sides. But the fact is, I haven’t found it yet. _

_ “You killed me when you left, Abram,” I said. Neil blinked at the use of his name, the corners of his eyes tinged red. “Whether you meant to do it or not, you did. You took any trust that I had put in you and you shattered it. Years of lies, years of secrets, years and years of broken promises, where you had told me that there was none. That is not something that can be taken lightly. _

_ “But making you suffer is not beneficial to me in any way. It’s petty, and it’s satisfying, and it’s bad for my health. I don’t want to think about what you deserve anymore. I want to think about what  _ I  _ deserve.” _

_ I paused. The heaviest part was out, now, and I could see the finish line from here. _

_“I deserve to be happy,” I said. “Or at least content. I deserve to live a comfortable, tolerable life with my husband who I love at my side. I deserve to wake up easy every morning and sleep every night feeling safe in my own home._ _I deserve to not have what you did intruding into our lives. So I want you to understand this: in order to have what I deserve, I must forgive you. But I’m not forgiving you for you. I’m forgiving you because, after every fucking thing I’ve gone through in this lifetime, it’s what I deserve.”_

_ Neil nodded. Earnest, quiet, understanding. There was a moment of tension. But I had forgiven him, and I meant it. _

_ I leaned forward, and he leaned forward, and we met in the middle in maybe the best kiss we’ve ever had. Our bodies collapsed together with the gravity of everything we felt. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ I had been holding my breath for years. I opened my mouth. I breathed in. _

_ This is love. This is what it’s made of. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

The night before Indiana, there was a knock on the hotel door.

Andrew opened it, and there was Robin, an off-color pale in the fluorescent glare above her.

“I feel... strange,” she said. Andrew guided her in toward the bed. She looked sick. He had never seen her face like this. He wasn’t sure what was happening.

And then Robin fell to the ground, and she began to shake. Tears formed at the corner of her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks to settle into the carpet.

“I understand,” she said softly. “I understand, now.”

And in a terrible moment of clarity, Andrew did too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (-:


	29. Palmetto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about it a lot, and decided this chapter is best presented through Neil and Andrew. I hope that's okay with everyone reading.

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Robin laid out on the floor, trembling. And I understood. She did, too. _

_ She reached out, and I took her hand. _

_ “Guess that was my life,” she said. She was half-smiling, though it was lost in her tears. _

_ “It’s not like that,” I said. _

_ “Oh,” she said, “it is. But it wasn’t too bad, I guess. And now, I get to live forever.” _

_ Her trembling increased. It wasn’t like the shivering or spasm of muscles. It was like all of her atoms were vibrating more and more with intensity to the point where she became blurry. _

_ [a pause] _

_ When a person believes in an idea so much, it can change them. _

_ It can change them completely. _

_ [silence] _

_ The blurriness subsided and there was a person exactly Robin’s size in a hoodie. _

_ Looking into the hood, I could still see her face. _

_ “I want you to know that I chose this,” she said. “I could have gone another way. But I wanted  _ this _ . I chose  _ this _ .” _

_ And then her face was gone, and there was only the empty black of the Oracle. _

_ [another pause, longer. Heavier.] _

_ It was always people. _

_ The Butchers were people and the Oracles were people, and we were all just  _ people _ struggling for an idea of what being a person should be like. _

_ And if people could do this, then we could undo it. _

_ It was time. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter IX: Palmetto.**

* * *

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ The field was supposed to be a housing tract, but somewhere between then and now the project was abandoned and buried and now the dirt lot sits, abandoned and chain-linked off, and will for the next millennia. It was miles from the nearest town, but it still had a dirt road that led into it, so it wasn’t any trouble for us to get there. _

_ All in all, Riko had picked his location well. _

_ By the time we had all gotten there, Riko was waiting. There was a hoard of Butchers behind him, all practically crawling over one another with the excitement of fresh blood. Every one of them had my father’s smile. _

_ We were completely outnumbered already. Riko had thousands of Butchers at his disposal. And we just had one Oracle who once had been named Robin. _

_ Riko knew this. I could see it in his eyes when we met him in the center of the field. _

_ “Hi, Nathaniel.” His voice was smooth. Confident. Uncaring of the fact that we were here with others; to him, the only thing that mattered was Andrew and I. _

_ I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything left to say. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Earlier, just after the morning, we all sat around waiting to leave and then... we weren’t sure. But we had a relative idea. A lot of us would die today. We tried to live with it. _

_ But it was very hard to live with. _

_ A man came up to me as we sat by my cab. He was older, and he looked like the walrus from Alice In Wonderland. He had once given Robin and I some files from a police station in Poughkeepsie. _

_ “Higgins,” I said. _

_ “You really got us into it now, didn’t you?” he asked. Though it wasn’t said with malicious intent. Just a statement of fact. _

_ “I suppose I did,” I said. I wasn’t exactly about to dispute it. _

_ “I lived a good life,” Higgins said. “Hopefully that means something.” _

_ “It all means something,” I said. _

_ We sat in silence for a bit, and then he let out a soft laugh. _

_ “I’ve thought it over a lot the past few weeks,” he said. “And in every possible scenario, I still give you that tape.” _

_ I said nothing. There was nothing else to say. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ “Keeping quiet?” Riko asked, flashing a smile and tilting his head. “Are you afraid you’ll say something in front of your husband that you might regret?” _

_ “There is nothing that needs to be said that hasn’t been already.” _

_ I knew I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, and Andrew confirmed this by pinching me in the side discreetly. _

_ “Oh?” Riko asked. “Have you worked it out, then? Years of lies and betrayal covered up in an instant? He still stayed, even after learning the truth?” _

_ “I guess you wouldn’t understand being loved by someone,” I said, ignoring Andrew’s glare next to me as I opened my mouth again. “Everyone’s left you, haven’t they? Kevin and the others. And your family doesn’t seem to care about you either, considering they tossed you into this dark corner of the world, with no interaction from the more prominent members up in the spotlight. What is that like, living in your brother’s shadow for so long that you don’t know what the sunlight feels like anymore?” _

_ Riko snarled, taking a step forward. _

_ “You know nothing, Wesninski.” _

_ [a pause] _

_ I hadn’t heard that name in decades. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Allison came to visit next. _

_ She sat next to me in the grass, looking out over the parking lot we sat above. Neil had left to meet with a few others about planning, which left me alone with Allison as I smoked. _

_ “Those will kill you, you know,” she said, peering at me out of the corner of her eye. _

_ “Statistically speaking, there are monsters that will handle that a lot sooner.” _

_ She let out a soft snort and picked up the pack that sat between us, pulling one out and sticking it between her lips. _

_ “I can’t remember the last time I smoked,” she said. “Probably when I was a teenager. But fuck it, you know? You’re right about the monster thing.” _

_ “I usually am when it comes to them.” _

_ She looked at me, taking a drag from her cigarette, and then nodded once. _

_ “I have the feeling you’re part monster yourself,” she said, “if you’ve had it in you to survive all of this.” _

_ I didn’t argue the point. We finished our cigarettes in silence. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ “Wesninski is dead,” I said. “He was killed in a prison somewhere in Baltimore. And I have never taken his name.” _

_ “We all carry the burdens of our family name with us,” Riko called to me, taking another step forward. “You cannot outrun him.” _

_ “I can outrun anything,” I said. I took a step forward, too. “You, though, will have to face your own demons today.” _

_ Riko snarled a second time, and charged. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Matt appeared as I was loading the truck. _

_ “I figured two sets of hands would be better than one,” he said. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to stock anything.” _

_ “You’re nervous,” I said. Because he was. His energy was enough to make those in close contact ready to move without stopping. _

_ “I hate waiting,” he said. “I would annoy the shit out of my exy team while I was waiting on the bench. I just wanted to be out there.” _

_ He grinned. “A good athlete, but a bit too aggressive to be a perfect teammate. Story of my life.” _

_ “That isn’t the entire story of your life,” I said. _

_ “That’s true,” he said, “but I might not live long enough to see the full one. And that’s fine with me. I hate talking, I just want to move.” _

_ I gave Matt a deadpan stare. _

_ “You hate talking?” I asked. _

_ He laughed. He laughed hard, and he laughed loud. And then he helped me finish loading the truck. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ One summer, when I was younger, my mother let me play exy. _

_ She had always tried to steer me away from things like that, knowing that my father wouldn’t allow it. But that summer Nathan was gone on business, and my mother and I had free reign of the house for the first time in years. _

_ There was nothing else like it. _

_ There’s a moment before the game starts, where everyone seems to be at a stand-still. The clock is frozen, time stands still, and every muscle in your body is coiled and tense, waiting for the ball to drop so that you can move. _

_ It’s the most exhilarating and terrifying feeling in the world, and it’s what we felt the moment before we charged Riko and the Butchers. _

_ The Oracle that was once Robin flew past me at an incredible speed. All Oracles had power, but this transformation was so new that it still bled energy like an open wound in time and space. There was a crackle in the air as they passed. A waver in the air; a ripple through time. _

_ Everyone else moved too, and the two sides met in the middle in a crack of fists and fury. We knew we had nowhere near enough people, but we had a plan, and that plan was entirely out of our control. _

_ Andrew and I set our sights on Riko. He moved toward us with an energy similar to the Oracle’s but more human. More feral. There was no crackle in space and time. There was only anger, hot and messy, and it was enough to leave him blind. _

_ If Andrew and I died today, it would be dying for something we stood for. There are much worse ways to end a life. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ I had met Dan Wilds two times in my life before she intercepted me on my way to get lunch. _

_ “I want to talk to you,” she said. _

_ “You just did,” I said back. “It was lovely, thanks for the memory. I’ll cherish it forever.” _

_ I continued on my way, but she was persistent, jogging along behind me like a lost child clinging to the only adult in the room. _

_ “I didn’t know,” she called, and I stopped. When I turned, she was frowning at the floor, her fists balled up at her sides. _

_ “I didn’t know,” she repeated. “If I had known this,  _ all _ of this-” she swept her arm out in front of her as if to show what she was referring to. “-was happening, I would have killed him myself.” _

_ “Bold words,” I said. “But do I believe in the follow-through?” _

_ “Believe whatever you want,” she said. “Just know that I would have done so without hesitation.” _

_ “There are plenty more monsters in this world,” I said. “And as much as you’d like it, Captain, not all of them can be slain.” _

_ “You’re fighting just as much as the rest of us,” she said. She pointed at me, her frown growing deeper. “How could you say something like that when you’re the one leading the charge?” _

_ “I did not choose a position of power,” I said. “I am fighting for my own life. Everyone else just happens to be fighting for theirs, too.” _

_ “So you wouldn’t fight for the safety of the future?” She asked. I blinked at her. _

_ “Not everyone has a moral compass that’s stuck on North,” I said. _

_ I left, heading over to the woman on the opposite end of the parking lot handing out sandwiches like a mother at a kid’s soccer game. _

_ Dan hung back, looking all at once torn and ready to kick my ass. _

_ Good. _

_ We can’t have someone that skilled doubting themselves this far into things. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ I went for Riko first, and he was prepared for that. He had judged our relative anger, and realized that I would not let Andrew take the first swing. He was my demon to face, and I would do so with my full force. _

_ I went for his face. He was ready. I was knocked down to the ground with a kick to the knee, and he went to stomp down on my throat nearly simultaneously. I shouldn’t have been surprised at the speed and efficiency at which he moved to kill me, but I was. He had never been this fast while training. He had a tendency to circle his prey, to play with it a bit before dealing a final blow. _

_ Riko relished in the challenge, not in the success. _

_ And then Andrew appeared behind him, swinging his arm around Riko’s neck into a fierce chokehold, ripping his head back and pulling him away from me. Riko threw his head back farther in time with his elbow, slamming Andrew in the chin and the kidney at the same time. He collapsed, but I had gotten up in the same moment, distracting Riko enough for Andrew to be able to pop him hard in the base of his spine to get Riko down. For a moment I felt triumphant, but Riko lunged toward me a moment later, head first into my stomach. Air left my lungs completely. _

_ He was too much for us. I hadn’t been able to properly train for months, and Andrew was moving on instinct alone. Riko had been training for this almost his entire life. It was as easy for him as breathing. _

_ I hadn’t had the chance to see how everyone else was doing. I could hear a chorus of Butchers, though, hollering around us. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Roland sat down next to me in the grass, grinning. _

_ “I haven’t had this much interaction with real people in years,” I said. “I hate it." _

_ Roland laughed, care-free and easy, as if we wouldn’t be marching to our deaths in a few hours. _

_ “Do you have plans after this?” He asked. I looked pointedly in the direction of Neil, who was talking to Matt and Dan. Probably about something stupid. He’s stupid. Whatever. _

_ “Most definitely yes,” I said. _

_ “Ah,” he said. _

_ “Don’t even start with that ‘maybe in a better world’ bullshit,” I said. “I’ve had experience recently with better worlds, and the facade of ‘better’ is one that is easily swayed. We deal with the world we’re dealt.” _

_ Roland held his hands up in mock surrender. “I hear it,” he said. “I’ll probably just end up going home. I might quit my job, though. The ocean is nice, but I think I’d rather be pouring drinks rather than knocking them back alone, you know?” _

_ “Any sign of the black boat?” I asked. _

_ “No,” he said. “And that’s the main reason I think it’s time for a career change. There’s really no point, now. I have nothing to look at.” _

_ “I think you’ll be a terrible bartender,” I said, and he laughed again. _

_ “Andrew of my kinder world,” he said, “it has been a pleasure and a heartbreak knowing you.” _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ We were losing. _

_ I mean, I don’t really know how else to say it. We knew it would happen, but it was still a hard concept to grasp. None of us had expected to walk away from today. We had dreamed our last dreams the night before. _

_ Riko looked almost identical to the way he had when our fight started, and Andrew and I were visibly starting to wane. On the other side of the field, the Oracle that had once been Robin could only do so much against so many Butchers. And those who came with us -- what could we have hoped for? _

_ And then, at the edge of the field, I saw another Oracle. And then another one beside them, and another one beside them. And behind the Oracles were hundreds of people; maybe thousands. And even in the blurred vision and through my pain, I felt hope. _

_ It was Palmetto. _

_[radio clicks off]_

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ I had told Renee not to come. _

_ “This isn’t a fight that you need to be a part of,” I had told her over the phone a week before. She hummed on the other end of the line. _

_ “I don’t need to,” she said. “You’re right about that. But I am skilled, and you could use an extra set of hands.” _

_ “We’ll have thousands of hands,” I said. This was a lie, at the time. I had no idea if this would actually be true. _

_ “Thousands of hands,” she said, “reaching for the same thing. Looking toward a common goal, and a future that they can believe in. What happens when a thousand hands reach toward the same goal all at once?” _

_ “I suppose we’ll find out,” I said. _

_ For once, Renee listened to me. _

_ She didn’t come. And for that I am grateful. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ If Andrew and I were to die today, I think that the look of pure defeat that fell across Riko’s face at the sight of so many people would have been a satisfying way to go. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ The sight of a petrified Kevin and a visibly disgruntled Wymack were last on my list of things I thought I would see before I died. _

_ And yet, there they stood, both of them seemingly unsure of what to do with themselves in the midst of all the people around them. Once Kevin saw me, his shoulders seemed to relax. _

_ “Andrew,” he said. Wymack nodded a gruff hello beside him. _

_ “So I see you were brave enough to leave your house,” I said, and Kevin frowned. _

_ “I have been traveling,” he said. “Not the same kind I did with Nathaniel, but actually visiting the places I go to. Spending time in libraries. Taking walks through parks. It is incredibly dull, but it is something that I have never done before. I am enjoying it.” _

_ “Don’t call him Nathaniel,” I said, and Kevin nodded once. _

_ “We will be joining you today,” he said. _

_ “It is not a smart thing we’re doing,” I said. _

_ Wymack spoke up beside Kevin. “We aren’t exactly smart people,” he said. “Just an extra set of hands.” _

_ Kevin nodded. I nodded. We went our separate ways. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ The new crowd swarmed the Butchers. They were strong, but we had the numbers, and the math was adding up a bit faster than they had been expecting. Riko glanced behind him, and a series of complicated expressions crossed his face as he tried to find a way to express his anger. _

_ He settled on, “Fuck.” _

_ Andrew started for Riko with a steady and final posture. This was it. _

_ “Just because you have the crowds, now, doesn’t mean that you are anything less than the dirt that I walk on. If you fight me, you will die.” _

_ “Who I am?” Andrew asked. His voice was dangerously low, and unbelievably even. He took another two steps forward. “I have faced hundreds of demons in this lifetime, and I have killed them all. This will not be the first time blood has stained these hands. You say that this will not change who I am?” _

_ He took another step, and was nearly face-to-face with Riko now. _

_ “I am the man that is going to take your life,” he said. “That is who I am.” _

_ I tried to find some strength to get across the gap between us to help Andrew, but they were too fast. There was a flurry of arms and blood and blows that I couldn’t follow, and I had no idea who had the upper hand until I knew it was Riko. _

_ He was straddling Andrew, a knife in his hand, and I was about to watch my husband die in front of me. _

_ Like the way you move through a dream, your legs buried halfway into the Earth and dragging farther down with each step. Like the pure, unfiltered dread and regret you feel when you fuck up and  _ know _ you fucked up, but cannot fix what has already been done. Like watching the last bit of hope leave a breathing man’s eyes just before the knife is plunged into his heart, and his chest stops moving as he stops living. _

_ It’s wanting him to keep living. _

_ Please, keep living. _

_ [a pause] _

_ [a breath] _

_ And then. _

_ I watched as Andrew’s body tensed as he flipped Riko to the ground, and before I or anyone else could react, he smashed Riko’s head into the concrete foundation of a house that would never be built. _

_ Riko’s eyes immediately went vacant, and his hands let the knife slip loose. _

_ But Andrew didn’t stop. Again and again, again and again, until every inch of his anger for the past 2 years was drained from his body completely. _

_ He rose, blood all over him. _

_ “I killed him,” he said. _

_ “You saved me,” I said. _

_ And he did. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ A few nights before she changed, Robin and I sat on the balcony of our hotel room. _

_ “I just wanna feel useful,” she said to me. “I’m never useful.” _

_ “I think you’ve been very useful,” I said. Because it was true. _

_ “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe there’s a difference between being useful and feeling useful. Maybe there is no correlation between the two.” _

_ “I don’t know how half of what we’ve done would have been accomplished if I hadn’t stumbled across you,” I said. _

_ “That’s a sweet lie,” Robin said, bumping her shoulder into mine. “Don’t ever tell me the truth.” _

_ [a pause] _

_ I wish I could have protected her. But I guess I’ll have to accept that she protected me, instead. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Neil:] _

_ It was over. _

_ I looked at the dead on the ground at my feet and didn’t recognize any of them. So many strangers who had come to die. Not for us, but for each other. I recognized that although we had been the catalyst, we were not the cause.  _

_ It is always important not to get those confused. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ An Oracle whose name we once knew, but now who has no name at all, stood beside us. _

_ “Is it over?” I asked. _

_ “ _ ** _For you, yes_ ** _ ,” they said. “ _ ** _I am still fighting them. And I am meeting you for the first time. And I am hundreds of years from now. Everything I am saying is only what I said in this moment. I cannot change a word_ ** _ .” _

_ “What if I poked you in the shoulder?” I asked. _

_ I don’t know where the joke came from. I think when you’re in shock, your brain twists on you. _

_ The Oracle, though, let out a laugh. _

_ “ _ ** _You don’t_ ** _ ,” they said. And then: “ _ ** _Andrew, I want you to know two things._ ** _ ” _

_ “What?” I asked. _

_ “ _ ** _The first,_ ** _ ” they said, “ _ ** _is that I feel useful. The second is this: you can go home, now. So, Andrew... Go home._ ** _ ” _

_ [silence] _

_ [static] _

_ [radio clicks off] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [does a little dance]


	30. An Ending.

_ [static] _

_ _

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ There are no happy endings, because there are no endings. _

_ There is always a next moment, even if we are not the ones involved in it. _

_ _

_ [Neil:] _

_ So many of the people who joined us are dead, now. Was it our fault? Was it worth it? _

_ Matt and Dan and Allison and Kevin and Wymack and Roland and the other survivors helped us bury those who did not make it. There were so many graves to dig. Where there was once the empty slate for a housing tract that would never be built, there was now a graveyard full of hundreds who fought for a future they would never get to see. _

_ _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ There is no end to this story. But there is an end to our telling of it. And I think that end is here. _

_ _

_ [Neil:] _

_ It was over, and we buried the dead and walked away from that place. Robin was gone -- or, more accurately, she was everywhere and forever. But she wasn’t Robin anymore. I don’t exactly know how to feel about that, because I don’t exactly know what it is, really. _

_ _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ She chose that. She wanted me to know that she chose it. And so I choose to be at peace with it. _

_ _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Through the night, we drove. _

_ _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ We didn’t talk. _

_ _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Morning came. _

_ _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ And with it, familiar streets. _

_ _

_ [Neil:] _

_ He pulled the truck to a stop. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ We opened the front door. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ And together… _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ And together… _

_ [Together:] _

_ We came home. _

* * *

* * *

**Abram Isn’t Dead.**

**Part III.**

**Chapter X: An Ending.**

* * *

* * *

It had been so long since either of them had been home.

Andrew almost didn’t recognize the smell. It was a weird thing to think about, but it was true. The smell of his home that had been so ingrained in his senses had been filtered out over the years away, and now it was enough to nearly overwhelm him. This place belonged to other people. People who were once them, but now are not.

They made pizza the first night they were home. It had been years, and Andrew kept reminding himself of that fact -  _ it had been years _ \- but it came back to them as naturally as breathing. Sauce, flour, hands, all intertwined and overlapping as they worked. Andrew forgot the familiarity of reaching for something and Neil already offering it to him. He had forgotten the way that the cabinets had been arranged, had forgotten the feeling of the tile under his feet as he made his way around the small space.

They sat on the couch -  _ their couch _ \- that same night, feet tangled together as they ate their pizza and watched TV. When Neil turned it on, there was the news, running a story about a fire outside of Tacoma. Or a landslide in Thousand Oaks. Or a hostage situation in St. Joseph. Andrew wasn’t paying much attention. Neil changed the channel, anyway; there was no need to worry about that right now. Not for a while, at least.

* * *

Routine happened sooner than Andrew thought would be possible.

A couple of weeks and their bed felt like their own again. The household chores were divided up the same as before. Friends came by to visit, one at a time, almost as if coming at once might overwhelm them like a frightened animal. And as Andrew sat across from Bee one night, hot cocoa in hand and feet curled up under him on the couch, he thought that they might have had the right idea about that after all.

* * *

They did not think about what would happen next.

There was no need to, for a while. Mostly because their days became busy with the ideas of learning how to simply  _ exist _ again. To take up space in a room that wasn’t fraught with nervous energy. To go to a diner and not spend the entire time looking over their shoulders waiting for something to appear. To exist for each other, and also themselves.

To learn how to trust again, to love again, to touch one another without pausing for permission, again.

It had taken years, before, when they were young and learning.

Now, it came much easier, though it still took some time.

* * *

One morning Andrew looked at the kitchen calendar and realized that it had been a year, now.

An entire year had passed, and they hadn’t heard any news about the Butchers. Nothing about Palmetto.

Well, nothing bad, anyway.

Dan still kept in contact with Neil. Matt, too, since apparently they were together now and doing great. Andrew really couldn’t care less, but Neil was invested, so he was invested by proxy.

They were rebuilding Palmetto from the inside. Turning it into an organization that it should have always been; one that protects, one that ensures the safety of those around it. They hadn’t heard from the Butchers for a while, but that didn’t mean that there was no work left to be done.

The Moriyamas were pulled from their positions in the government. It was spun as a scandal involving embezzlement and corruption, but Neil and Andrew knew the truth. On the day the story broke, Renee was on three different news outlets within six hours, and Dan called Neil to celebrate.

Andrew, though, had a new job. And Neil, too, had a new job. Normal jobs. Simple jobs. Quiet, boring, mind-numbing jobs. They reconnected with friends. They had dinners with family. Whatever this was, they were doing it.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Love is the look he gives me when we both come from work and we’re tired, but one of us has to figure out what dinner will be, and so we both go into the kitchen, put our hands on our hips, furrow our brows at what’s in the fridge.  _

_ Love is each of us showering before bed, one after the other. We don’t usually shower at the same time, because we like very different temperatures of water, and that’s love, too.  _

_ When we’re finished, the fog in the mirror gives way to a portrait of the two of us preparing to sleep. It’s a portrait of love, and we look at it every night. _

_ [Neil:] _

_ Love is the way his neck smells. That’s where it’s strongest, the side of his neck. And I lean into it and I breathe in, and I remember what it means to live with another person. _

_ Love is the hours we spend under a blanket on the couch, and love is also the hours we spend apart, earning a living so that we can return to the couch and once more lie down together. Love is the beat of the heart and the passage of air and it’s the circulation of fluids and it’s the equilibrium of all the functions that sustain us. _

_ [Andrew:] _

_ Love is the absence of all he could say to me. It’s knowing that there is pain and choosing to never activate it. Not as a single choice made once and left secure forever, but a daily choice. Each morning we wake and I hold his betrayal in my hands, and then set it gently down and we go on with the day. _

_ Love is not freedom. But freedom isn’t inherently good, there can be terrible freedom and wonderful captivity. Love is wonderful captivity. It is a constraint from which you never wish to escape. _

_ [Neil:]  _

_ Love in the morning is a cup of coffee made just the way he likes it. And love at noon, as the way the sun through his hair makes an imprint on my breathing. And love in the afternoon, when I nap alone but nap knowing that he is pacing around the house somewhere. And his motion is near my stillness. And love in the evening, as a laying of hands and a stretching of limbs. And love in the quietest hour of night, when in a moment of wakefulness between hours or dreaming, I hear the soft hiss of him sleeping and feel what birds must feel when nesting. _

_ We are nothing if not absurd. We are nothing. _

_ [Andrew:]  _

_ Love as an activity and as an emotion and as a bodily function and as a series of decisions and as a meal prepared and eaten together at a home we share. _

_ Love as a person who returned to me and then never left again. _

_ [Neil:]  _

_ I never left again. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

* * *

Two years later, as they watched some show on TV that Andrew really wasn’t watching, he thought about how it almost felt as if nothing had ever happened.

It took him off guard, a bit, because it  _ had _ happened, and it always  _ will _ have happened, and there was nothing that could be taken back to change that. But it was similar. It was so similar that he could almost be fooled into forgetting.

As Neil leaned into him on the couch fast asleep, Andrew ran his fingers through his hair. Just below his right ear was a scar from a fight with a Butcher. Andrew looked at his own fingers, covered in scars and bumps that would never go away from his own fights. He looked at the scar above Neil’s eyebrow, thought about the scars that littered both of their torsos.

It was nice, sometimes, to be fooled. But in the end, their history was written across their skin for them to be reminded again.

* * *

Seven years later and Aaron’s kid laid calling out to him from the couch, asking if he could bring her cookies and maybe, like, a vanilla shake or something. 

Andrew reminds her from his spot in the kitchen that her dad had told him very specifically  _ not _ to do that, as he dumped another spoonful of vanilla ice cream into the blender and pulled two cups from the cabinet.

He thinks, as he places the off-limits vanilla shake on the coffee table in front of his niece, that if he and Neil had ever had a kid, he would have named her Robin. 

* * *

Twelve years later and Neil decided to bring up the idea of getting a cat.

Andrew stared at him for much longer than was necessary, and then said, definitively, no.

Neil reminded Andrew that they had fought literal monsters and won. How hard could a cat really be?

Andrew reminded Neil that if they got a cat, it would be Neil’s responsibility, as he was refusing to get involved with it.

As Neil called up the nearest shelter to see if anything was available, Andrew looked out the window across the street. A person in a hoodie stared back at him. Or at least, he assumed they were staring, as he couldn’t see their face through the shadow. He didn’t know who it was; probably some teenager from around the neighborhood bored and sulking around. He raised his hand briefly in greeting, but when he looked again, the person was gone.

* * *

After Aaron’s daughter’s college graduation Neil and Andrew came home to their cats and the silence of a settled home. King wound through Andrew’s feet as he made his way through the living room, and Sir just stared at them from the couch, waiting for them to come to him.

Andrew reminded himself daily to pinch Nicky the next time they saw him and Erik in retaliation for their terrible cat names.

That night he would have nightmares that woke him, just as he did every night. Just as Neil did most nights, too. But they would wake up in a panic, reaching blindly for one another in the dark, and after feeling each other’s heartbeats beneath the other’s fingertips, they would settle back in and fall asleep again, fingers intertwined with their cats between them.

* * *

Years later still and now they were old. And Andrew, honestly, never really thought that would happen to them.

It never happened in the mirror. In the mirror, it was always him and it was always Neil, day after day, year after year, the same faces and the same routines.

It happened in retrospect, instead, after looking through old photographs and realizing that, oh, he did not look like that anymore, did he?

What’s what he thinks he looks like, but it’s not, is it?

He was an old person, now.

It was both satisfying, and not.

Aaron’s daughter still visited regularly, along with Aaron and his wife. Renee still came by for tea in the afternoons, and Dan and Matt still called.

Bee sat atop the fireplace, half of her with him, and half of her with Aaron. He wondered if she would be proud of him, today, knowing that he made it this far.

He hopes, and thinks, that she would.

* * *

They lived more after that day, of course. Years, content and comfortable in their home with those they loved, and who loved them. And then they died.

It happened, the same way that it happens to anyone. Day after day, month after month, year after year; people die. It is a simple fact of life: it always ends.

Andrew, up until the end, though, was happy. Was content. Was satisfied, and was lucky.

He was so, so lucky.

He wouldn’t have lived it any other way.

And then, his story ended. But it was not really his, as much as his chapter in a story that would continue on without him. One that would continue on safer, the world spinning in a direction that carried his influence, but not his soul.

And he was okay with that.

* * *

* * *

She had never thought much about the moon.

But she found herself looking at it, and it was beautiful. It was such a strange assortment of factors that led to this perfect grey and while circle sitting up in the sky, working alongside the tides to move the sea. She could look at it for hours. And maybe she would.

She had the time, after all.

She had been dead. Or, well, as close to dead as something like herself  _ could  _ be, really. She wasn’t exactly sure how it all worked. 

She had woken up in a bush by the highway.

She always woke up on the roads. They were where she belonged. They were the lifeblood of what she did.

If she had a name, it would be Butcher. But she has no name.

Lola was nice, though. Lola felt good.

Butcher had a wonderful ring to it, but ever since it had been  _ his _ mantle, it never felt like it fit her just right. He was the only one it ever truly  _ belonged _ to.

She missed him. He was the best of them, really. Nathan Wesninski. He would live forever through his name.

Later she would need to collect a car from a person who thought they would be seeing tomorrow. But there was time for that, too, so she took her time walking down the side of the highway instead. She felt the cold of the night seep through her clothes, and for the first time in a long time, she stopped and watched the moon.

Eventually, she got herself a car. And then a place to live.

That was the thing; everything was there if you get the people who used to own it out of the way. And then, after she was settled, she decided to rest.

She was never quite sure how long resting would end up taking her. Sometimes it was only months, sometimes it was years. But the world always ended up changing by the time she felt strong enough again. She never watched the calendar; whenever she felt that strength flow through her, she knew she would be heading out again, and doing it all once more.

Years, maybe, and she was out again, hanging out at truck stops and roadside bars. Passing through cities and burying herself in the deepest depths of the underground networks that ran beneath them. 

She would meet a man whose views were a lot like her own, and she would whisper a few suggestions in his ear.

And that was how it started.

Soon enough he would come to her, his face made strange by the monstrous part of him. But ultimately, it would be his choice. It always was.

There were always highs, and always lows. And now, she was on quite a high.

She never truly minded the lows, knowing that the cycle would always move in her favor, in the end. But there was always something wonderful about the highs. She could feel it like an itch in her limbs. Like a heartbeat pulsing behind her eyes.

Sometimes, she would see those Oracles in their ridiculous hoodies, always watching, always moving.

Palmetto.

They had met before, and they would meet again. An endless back and forth that would never end; good versus evil, though humans were always so binary about those terms.

If there was one Oracle that worried her, it was that one.

The one from before, the one that was human and then not -- well. They were  _ all _ human at one point, weren’t they?

But this one, this one was powerful. This one  _ saw _ her.

This one was trouble.

She stopped again on the side of the road one night, and watched the moon in silence.

Maybe she would go there someday. Maybe she would go up there, sit alone for 300 years, and then when she was nice and hungry, she would come back. Because the dead return.

Because the dead return.

Junior and his husband never did see her again. The cycle that she lived her life was so much longer than any one person’s life could ever truly reach. So they died with their happy ending. They would never see the cycle circle around again, and they would never know that it would.

* * *

_ [radio clicks on] _

_ [Lola:] _

_ Ah, Junior. I want to start by saying... _

_ [a laugh] _

_ [a pause] _

_ [a laugh] _

_ Ah, shit. _

_ [radio clicks off] _

_ [static] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU for reading this and sticking it out with me!!! It's wild to think that we're done, now.
> 
> I kept a lot of the scenes in this fic pretty parallel to the original content in the end, because Joseph's writing and imagery is too good to pass on. And for those that haven't heard/aren't invested in listening to the original content, I still would like to be able to share some of my favorite bits from it.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed, and I'm grateful for the support!!
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't listened to Alice Isn't Dead yet, what are you doing?
> 
> Go listen to this fantastic podcast about a lesbian trucker hunting down her missing wife. Do it right now.


End file.
